ECHO

The Syncretic Method: a Lover’s Homage to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’ “The Divine Narcissus”

“Echo”

David Shohl (2024)

— Homage to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’ “El Divino Narciso”

How shy appears
The boy in the mirror,
How shiny his tears.

Infatuated, fair
Narcissus loves
Narcosis —
Self-hypnosis,
Nothing less.

Like me, he likes a likeness.
Our magic is empathic:
I like to liken, he
Likes his lookalike.

I second him.
I mute his words,
His voice I blur,
His name, my slur.

Hear me here,
Me, thy aural image,
Sound of thy shadow.
Sing so we solo together
In fractal delay.

I am art,
Imitating his life.

Numbness gnaws
As ice aches.

~~~~~

I am the well of life.

My reservoir, love's cure,
Is the mirror of creation.

A welling love inflames,
My wellness pains,
My fullness pools.

A shepherd calls, he
Feedeth among the lilies.
Pastoral pastor, lead my love
Afield in a field aflower.

Daughters of Elysium,
Daughters of Jerusalem,
If ye see my beloved,
Tell him I am sick with love,
Help me mourn my bridegroom.

In sorrow shall I bear
His young, redouble
Him, by love regain
The rose of Sharon.

He sees me not.
Transfixed, his eyes
Ink blots.

A spring shut up,
A fountain sealed.

Yet he hears me parody
His solipsist soliloquy,
“Abide with me, thou art fair!”

~~~~~

I am the voice of his beloved.

I style myself his muse,
His chorus of one
And captive audience.

He mistakes me for his better —
She shall be woman named —
His mother's house,
And into the chamber
Of her that conceived him:

"Art thou my mother
Leiriope, whose glance
Drew me from the
River Cephisus my father?”

Silent, he awaits reply.
Breathlessly I urge,
Transmute me!

Let me hear thy voice,
For sweet is thy voice.

In his ecstasy
I am beside myself,
Himself in effigy,
Narcissus poeticus.

We are one flesh and blood,
Flow and flower, for
I am the water of life,
A fountain of gardens,
A well of living waters.

Mother create me,
Thy countenance is comely.
Father commend me
On the face of the deep.

~~~~~

And in Tenochtitlan am I,
Sor Juana my midwife,
Nahua Jesus’ emissary —
Lord of seed-corn,
Bread of Life — the bride
Avows her groom’s nativity,
Dios de las semillas.

Thus pleads Sor Juana,
“For Love’s sake, I need
Aztec faith alive.”

The Spanish Conquest is a
Sacrament, a world-historic
Sacred drama, art for God’s sake.

Seminal Europe breeds
America, the Virgin Land.
She receives the
Savior, an unknown god
As Christ prefigures
In Attic Greece his
Image San Narciso.

Flying serpent anointed of the
Earth and heaven, Quetzalcoatl
Precious Twin, receives his body
In his brother’s smoking mirror.
He sees I is an other, naked and
Ravished of his heart, his spouse,
His sister is a garden enclosed,
For love is better than pulque.

He dies and rises in his natal
Soil. How like a larval mask,
Burst butterflies his
Blooming heart, as
Xochipilli, Prince of Flowers.

Spilled blood grows
Guilt, the seed of sin
Ingrains the generations,
Sown in the land
Of my body’s fathers.

Spilled blood feeds the
Staff of life, elevates
The fractioned host to
The Father and the
Holy Ghost, above
The chalice of the
Wine-dark sea, my mother.

Disgorged from earth’s
Womb, poured forth from
The flower of the rock,
Thorny heart of nopal,
Advent returns to begin
Again the Evangelic Word
Made flesh in the New World.

The mystery play is Sister Juana’s
Mercy plea: the magic Word
Incarnate mitigates our misery.
Commingled in communion, we
Commiserate a violent rite —
A misery play — where blood
Redeems the New Wound’s body.

Sing Tenth Muse,
Mexican Phoenix,
As it was in ancient days,
The Son of Man seeks his
Image fair in the face of
His beloved Human Nature.

~~~~~

And on Kithairon am I,
Its wild peak my altar,
Evergreen my wood.

First from nearby Thebes
Comes Dionysus, sired
By highborn Zeus on
Cadmus’ child flamboyant
Semele, her corpus delicti
A body electric.

From his Father’s thighbone
Rose the son, a brazen mirror
Image. Thus swore sage
Tiresias, “Behold, a reckless
Reckoning is nigh.”

Come ye maenads, help me
Mourn the spawn of Cadmus.

Prudent Prince Pentheus
Wages war upon his bloodline’s
Cult of mayhem, his stout
Legging abrades his raw calf.
How like a deer, stricken
By many princes.

My prince invests a body
Politic, a house divided
Against himself, he cannot
Stand firsthand the blessings
Of the maddened god.

Beneath the rock’s
Foundation, from Kore’s
Grove I look upon his
Highness, atop a fir,
King of the wood.

In his purview, he is
The spectacle he sees,
Split from himself, a child
From his mother’s arms.

The mad king,
Our head of state
Has lost his head.

Headlong falls his throne,
His scepter unhanded,
Needles frame his crown.

His mother knows him not,
Not herself, fruitful Agave.
How like Jocasta, his nurse
His noose, his clan accursed.

She takes the fruit of her womb
Thereof, drinks the dark milk of
His warm breast, his youth ageless
As twice-born Dionysus from
His Father’s maiden skin.

By nepenthe she shall be numbed,
Mountain mother, mons Veneris,
Cast down from the height.

Fountain mother, fons Veneris,
Century flower, shed thy
Blood upon this ground,
Seeded by thy Father’s serpent.

~~~~~

I shall be woman seen.

My nakedness enchants
Him, lonely in a shaded
Forest, netting game.
I baptize him a stag
Ensnared, his prey himself,
Lost Actaeon, scion of
Cadmus, antlers spread
Aloft, cradled in a bough.

How timid appear
My lover’s eyes,
How flush with desire.

Fasting in the wilderness,
His hunger is a wolf pack
Devoted to devour him,
Shred limb from limb,
Eat the fruit thereof,
Dismember him
Als wie ein Lamm.

How like a ram for Isaac,
His crown of spires caught
In a thicket, the crown
Wherewith his mother
Crowned him in the day
Of his espousal.

Lamb of God, this
Is my fruiting body.
Take it and eat hereof, a
Consummation devoutly wished.

In the beginning was the wound
And the wound was made fresh.
And the trauma was dreamt,
Als wie ein Traum.

Wounded Adam sleeps and sees
Himself Zeus, a male mother,
Not from woman born,
But virginal quarried from
Unclosed flesh, washed
In the blood of the Lethe.

~~~~~

I looketh forth, fair as the moon,
To see the fruits of the valley,
Take hold his limbs of Osiris,
Petals in frost.

Narcissus’ kissing cousins
Pentheus and Actaeon, alike
Descent of earth-born warriors
Uprooted, each knew himself
Naked, visible and divisible,
His body of knowledge sown
Into a cleft of the rock, the
Sown Men reaped.

His mother’s eye agleam, Leiriope
Bade sightless seer Tiresias
Divine Narcissus’ destiny,
Wounded at the hour of birth
Unto his hour of death:
“Avoid the hour when
He knows himself.”

The selfsame soothsayer
Warned Jocasta, queen of
Thebes, that she expose
Nude Oedipus on Kithairon,
Wounded at his hour of birth
Unto the hour of death:
“Beware the hour when
He knows himself.”

Fate ordained the son of Laius
Solve the riddle of himself —
What animal is man —
A dying goat whose medicine
Relieves the plague upon his house.
He taketh away the sins of
The world, crucified on the
Crossroad to his Father's kingdom.

Eyeless in the evening,
Crooked Oedipus limps
On three legs, his
Ankle scarred —
By his wound his name —
Leaning upon his beloved,
Hounded by Furies.

Three limbs bear the king,
His family tree his body’s
Trunk, his staff a
Branch of knowledge.

Lame of gored, thou art the lord
Who stoops, staggers, thy crown
Lists, a lily among thorns.

Tiresias prognosticates
The selfsame tale recursively:

“One vision alone I know.
I beheld the goddess’
Hieromantic serpents
Rapt in love, whose
Entrained tongues of flame
Licked cryptic oracles unto
My ears and sealed my eyes
To shield her scene by sacrifice.

“The root of good and evil is an
Everlasting tree of life and death.
Omniscient, I personify
A chronic wound. Trauma
Claws me day and night, how like
Prometheus, the name his wound:
Forethought bound and
Galled upon the summit.

“There is nothing to learn
But this: the examined life
Is not worth living. Know
Thyself not. Look not
Within nor without,
Neither ahead nor back, lest
Thou slay thyself by sight.”

~~~~~

I am the lily of the valley,
The shade of death.

We drown in love.
The specter of
Death becomes me.

Translucent, I guide him,
He sees through me,
The light of the world.

My face faces his,
His soul eternal,
Eternally feminine,
Conceived in Psyche,
Anima mundi.

I gather my singular
Flock to a vale by
A rill. We fall and
Fill its bed, fired in the
Hollow of a fennel stalk.

I am the water of death.
Darkness on the face of
The deep, I divide the upper
Waters from the lower waters.

Let me see thy face,
My face in thy face,
Comely as Jerusalem.

I fall ill in
Love’s well,
A fallen woman.
Eve’s fall leaves all
To ail, frail as foil.

Contagious love,
My magic touch
The kiss of death.

Take this and eat,
And he ate the fruit
Thereof and knew himself,
Saw he was naked,
Drank death's elixir.

Sleep, son of God.
New Adam slept,
His flesh closed up.
And he dreamt:
By her womb she
Was woman named.

In the mirror of Christ
I break apart myself
From other, fall from
Grace to soul and body.

I sleep but my heart waketh.
Flesh of my flesh, whither
Is my beloved gone,
Whom my soul loveth?

Immured in death’s cave, the
Hidden Imam awaits the
Watchdog Anubis to call End
Times, Return of the Mahdi.

Uplifting crowns of lilies,
In turns I writhe
Perennial wreaths
To raise his wraith.

Come Daughters of Elis and Zion,
Carmelites de la Cruz, help me
Mourn my beloved. Eat this
Fruit in memory, washed
In the blood of the lamb.

~~~~~

I bring not peace but a
Sword, armed Athena in my
Father's virgin chamber
That conceived me:
Destroy this temple.

My kingdom is not
Of this world. My
Father's mansion is
A wall of water,
A swelling flame.

Narcissus cries, his
Hebephrenia nothing more
Than nihilism, Death-in-Life
Benumbed and stifled.

Spring grass we become, a
Glorious trail puts out buds, our
Heart, the flower of our bodies
Opens its petals, then withers.

This body is a temple,
This blood a fountain.
In three days I will raise it up.

Thy father and mother
Quetzalcoatl made thee a
Fountain of mercy, like the
Clearest water that washes
Away the soil from the soul.
Now art thou born anew,
Now dost thou begin to live.

Return, return that I
May look upon thee.
Lift up thy countenance,
Thou art comely.

Fruit of my flesh,
Thou art the true vine,
And thy Father is
The husbandman.

Likeness is all,
Alles ist Gleichnis,
Sympathetic magic,
Like begets like,
Love giveth life.

Quetzalcoatl’s watchdog twin Xolotl
Outruns death, turns to maize
Then maguey thorn, the king’s
Two bodies, from earth to
Fountain of Life, a walking fish
Sacrificed and christened Axolotl.

To Mother Mary pray:
O, my love, I am
The resurrection and
The breath of the world.

To Mary Magdalene pray:
I thirst, my beloved,
I am on fire with
Desire of being loved.

To the Mother of All Living pray:
Abide in me, and I in thee,
Flesh of the fruit for the
Feast of Corpus Christi.

~~~~~

I shall be woman heard.

All-giving throat to love,
Siren of Solomon,
Honey and milk are
My tongue, causing
The lips of those
Asleep to speak.

I am his interpreter.
I grasp his thought
With my hand,
Send him astray,
Out of his mind.

More than mimesis,
My art transforms.

Cluster of the vine,
Umbilicus entwined,
Ye Daughters of Eleusis,
Thy scarlet thread mine.

My daily blood, the sap of
Truth, is immortal death’s
Asphodel. In the bread of
Christ we crumble together,
In wine we share blood shed.

For Life’s sake writes Sor Juana,
“Love with power to wound
In me has shown its power:
Loving my resemblance,
From Heaven came I to die.”

In the well of creation
My witness is making.
I am that I am,
I shall be woman named.

Water this wounded
Heart’s fleshy chambers
With salt-fire tears,
Let this tongue reach down
And drink the blood of the calf.

As the bough cannot bear fruit
Of itself, except it abide in the vine,
Abide in me and I in thee.

Our magic is galvanic,
Love draws like to like.
I partake the likeness thereof,
His voice makes me himself,
My mouth his memoir
Sung by heart.

In the beginning was a Garden of
Verses, the word turned earth.

I recollect his scattered limbs,
Render him anew, that he may
Enter me, inter himself alive
In me, among the fruited tables
Of my heart, and bless and
Keep the body thereof.

Now Quetzalcoatl gives thee
Light and a new Sun; now also
Dost thou begin to flower, and
To put forth shoots from thy
Mother’s womb, and there
Shalt thou draw blood.

Lo, he is the Morning Star,
God as man of virgin birth,
Lord of Dawn, Morning Glory,
Light-Bringer, Venus and
Adonai ascendant, call
The sky thy lover.

~~~~~

I hear thy voice in the garden.

Thy voice is lovely,
Thy speech is comely.
Thy words abide in me
That my joy may be full.

My beloved
Transubstantiates
Flesh into flower,
Navel of the world.

By her name her womb,
Her word made flesh,
The fruit thereof
His sacred heart.

I raised him up
Under the apple tree,
Under his shadow,
And his fruit was
Sweet to my taste.

My beloved is mine
And I am his.

Tender thy voice,
Cause me to hear it,
Make me thine.

I thirst, my beloved,
Abide in the vine with me.
This is my blood,
My heart a fountain,
Thy love is better than wine.

In joy or pain, come quickly and
Abide, my head is filled with dew.

Likeness is ripeness,
Ripeness is all. In his
Likeness he made them
Male and female, heaven
And earth in his image,
Quetzalcoatl breathed the
Wind of life into man.

Set me as a seal upon thy heart,
For love is strong as death.
Many waters cannot quench
Love, neither can floods drown
The most vehement flame.

How fair appears
The youth in the glass,
How lustrous his gaze.

My beloved is mine
And he desires me.

With open face beholding
As in a glass the glory of
The Lord, we are changed
Into the same image
From glory to glory,
Even as by the
Spirit of the Lord.

Rise up, my love, my
Fair one, and come away,
For the winter is past,
The flowers appear on the earth.

Pulsing heart,
Blood of the vine,
Infernal ferment,
A tomb unsealed.

Where two rivers meet, red
As lava and glacial blue,
A fisher of men embanks
His kingdom, the father of
Fire floats in a pool of circled
Battlements of blossoming war,
A Flammentod of scalding rain.

To burning water the
Prophet comes by virid al-Khadir,
Caught up in God’s chariot to the
Fiery lake’s celestial city.
An encaved sleeper wakens
From a funeral pyre of
Flowering stone, his bright
Wings flutter to the firmament.

In the beginning was the word,
And the word was made flesh,
The fleshy tablets of the heart,
Thy wounded heart transfigured.

Abide in the vine,
Divine Narcissus,
Fruit of my flesh,
Abide in me.

~~~~~

Insatiable Eros asks
Why my lover dies.

Narcissus knows the answer
Because he knows himself:

“I am thy greatest godly gift.
I am the best of thee, all who
Revere in me their own divinity.

“Partake of my flesh, for it is
Thine, made in God’s image.
I am thy sacred body, thy
Apotheosis is Narcissus.

“In me thy throbbing blood is
Miracle, I am priest and physician.
I am the balm of Gilead,
Milk for thy hardened heart.

“Take me and drink hereof,
Die in my fever and heal.
We are reborn, I and
Thou, revived in one body.

“That is why I die thy death,
As from the wound of birth
The child breaks in waves,
All that flourishes is replete.

“Without me, all life
Palls to stagnant winter.
My bosom blooms, my
Welling forth is thy salvation.

“I am the Flower Prince,
Apocalypse of Eros.
Call me Ganymedes,
Flower of humanity,
Bearing nectar unto god,
My cup runneth over.

“Extravagance lights love’s
Fluorescence, in extremis
Is our life supreme.
Abide in me, the fair
Divine Narcissus, ye
Lovers, come sleep by me.

“For I am the lodestone,
My magic magnetic,
My force thrills
Love’s deep gasp.

“All is my likeness,
My reflection turns
World without end,
This body of water.

“All I see I become.
Whither is my beloved
Turned aside, that I
May seek him?

“For whosoever loses his life
For my sake, for love of my
Eternal body, shall find it.”

Thus spake my love,
His flesh my faith
His word my lips.

Blessed be my holy madman,
For his labor of love is mine.
Blessed be his double beauty,
Beatify his dying life.

Enamored by the mirror
On the well, my beloved
And I recite our aged refrain:

“I need Thee every hour,
Every hour abide with me.
O I need Thee, Thou art fair,
Abide with me, I need Thee!”

(In memory of Norman O. Brown. 1985, San Francisco; rev. 2024, NYC)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~