Pieces of the puzzle:
(1) from St. John of the Cross, "The Dark Night" (16th Century)
Once in the dark of night
when love burned bright with yearning, I arose
(O windfall of delight)
and how I left none knows--
dead to the world my house in deep repose;
in the dark, where all goes right,
thanks to a secret ladder, other clothes,
(O windfall of delight)
in the dark, enwrapped in those--
dead to the world my house in deep repose.
There in the lucky dark,
none to observe me, darkness far and wide;
no sign for me to mark,
no other light, no guide
except for my heart--the fire, the fire inside!
(2) from Federico Garcia Lorca, "Prologue" to "In the Garden of the Lunar Grapefruits" (1920s)
I have taken leave of the friends I love the most & have set out on a short dramatic journey. On a silver mirror I find, long before dawn, the satchel with the clothing I'll need for the exotic country to which I am heading.
The tight, cold scent of sunrise beats weirdly on the huge escarpment we call night.
On the sky's stretched page a cloud's initial letter trembles, & below my balcony a nightingale & frog raise up a sleepy cross of sound.
I--tranquil, melancholy man--make my final preparations, impeded by those subtlest feelings aroused in mme by wings & by concentric circles. On the white wall in my room, stiff & rigid like a snake in a museum, hangs the noble sword my grandfather carried in the war against Don Carlos the Pretender.
With reverence I take the sword down, coated with yellow rust like a white poplar, & I gird it on me while remembering that I'll have to go through an awful invisible fight before I enter the garden. An ecstatic & ferocious fight against my secular enemy, the giant dragon Common Sense.
.....
Before taking off just now I felt a sharp pain in my heart. My family is sleeping & the whole house is in a state of absolute repose. The dawn reveals towers & one by one counts up the tree leaves. It slips a costume on me: crackling, made of spangled lace.