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Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Born on November 12, 1651, Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez would eventually become a nun and a poet known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz...
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Love Opened a Mortal Wound / Con el dolor de la mortal herida

 
by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
translated by Jaime Manrique and Joan Larkin

(Skip to the original poem in Spanish)

Love opened a mortal wound.
In agony, I worked the blade
to make it deeper. Please,
I begged, let death come quick.

Wild, distracted, sick, 
I counted, counted
all the ways love hurt me.
One life, I thought--a thousand deaths.

Blow after blow, my heart
couldn't survive this beating.
Then--how can I explain it?

I came to my senses. I said,
Why do I suffer? What lover
ever had so much pleasure?

Con el dolor de la moral herida,
de un agravio de amor me lamentaba;
y por ver si la muerte se llegaba,
procuraba que fuese más crecida.

Toda en el mal el alma divertida,
pena por pena su dolor sumaba,
y en cada circunstancia ponderaba
que sobrarban mil muertes a una vida.

Y cuando, al golpe de uno y otro tiro,
rendido el corazón daba penoso
señas de dar el último suspiro,

no sé con qué destino prodigioso
volví en mi acuerdo y dije:--¿Qué me admiro?
¿Quién en amor ha sido más dichoso?






Original work by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. From Sor Juana's Love Poems, translated by Joan Larkin and Jaime Manrique. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.
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