Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591) occupies a place in Spanish literature that doesn’t quite match anything in English poetry. He’s not exactly the Chaucer (c. 1345–1400) of the language; that’s probably Juan Ruiz (c. 1283–c. 1350), the Archpriest of Hita, except that Ruiz’s Spanish is closer to modern Spanish than Chaucer’s English is to the language of our day. John is a figure in Spain’s Golden Age, the era that produced Cervantes’s fiction, Lope de Vega’s plays, Teresa of Ávila’s mystical writings, together with the poetry of Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645) and Luis de Góngora (1561–1627). But with his small body of work, John can’t stand as, say, the Shakespeare of Spanish.

Really, the best analogy might be Edmund Spenser (1553–1599), creating forms that subsequent poets would use and teaching a sense of sound in the modern language that would last down the ages. Except that Spenser wrote a large body of poetry, and John of the Cross is still read and revered in Spanish in a way that Spenser is not: an English poet more gestured at as a historical fact than read as a living source these days.

A Carmelite mystic — and Catholic saint, named by Rome a Doctor of the Church — St. John had planned to enter a silent monastery as a young man. But then, on a trip to Medina del Campo in 1567, he met Teresa of Ávila, a woman so overwhelming that no one escaped an encounter with her unscathed. Drawn into her Carmelite world, he produced the mystical poetry that became a permanent part of Spanish literature. 

Rhina P. Espaillat’s translations of that poetry have now been gathered in a recent book that is very much worth getting: “The Spring that Feeds the Torrent: Poems by St. John of the Cross” ($14, from Wiseblood Books). The 91-year-old Ms. Espaillat has long been a favorite of The New York Sun’s. We recognized her poetry well before most other publications, booming her 73 years ago with a January 4, 1950, article titled “Teen-age Poet Wins Honors.” And we’re still praising her. In her new English translation she captures both the rhyme schemes of John of the Cross and his sense of the sound forms that would influence the history of Spanish poetry.

She captures as well his sense of the erotic — perhaps on best display in today’s Poem of the Day, in celebration of John’s birthday on June 24: Canciones de el alma en la íntima comunicación de unión de amor de Díos, “Songs of the Soul in Intimate Amorous Communion with God.” Contemporary poets like to think of themselves as brave, but they are often, in their way, prissy and self-censoring. John of the Cross plunges without hesitation into sexual ecstasy as a metaphor for divine love: “How tenderly you love me . . . / with what rare lover’s skill have I been pleasured!”

Songs of the Soul in Intimate Amorous Communion with God
by St. John of the Cross (translated by Rhina P. Espaillat)

O love, you living flame
who wound with tender fire
my very soul, down to its depths descending! 
No longer hushed by shame,
come now, to your desire;
sunder the veil that parts for sweet befriending.

O soft subjection!
O wound that joys beget!
O gentle hand! O touch with pleasures rife 
that hints at resurrection
and ransoms every debt!
You have done death to death, and made it life.

O fiery lamps ignited —
whose bright resplendent gleams
light those deep caverns where the mind, in hiding, 
dwelt blind and all benighted —
your dazzling radiance streams
warm rays on the beloved there abiding!

How tenderly you love me
and conjure in my breast —
that secret place where you alone are treasured— 
how — your sweet breath above me —
by heaven’s good possessed —
with what rare lover’s skill have I been pleasured!

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.