92:  Arguye de inconsecuentes el gusto y la censura de los hombres….

Men never neglect accusing
Women—although without reason,
Blaming our Guilt, and abusing
Us, careless of sense or season.

Anxious—without equal—to drag
To bed every Eve, solicit
Our jailing in miasma, bag
Us in bogs, brand us “slut” or “chit,”

And thus incite diligently
Our Damnation, you denude us
With eye and tongue—adamantly—
Lusting for lusts you’ve imbued us

With!  Your prudish humour’s an act:
Pure flawed advice, insights unclear;
Hopeless to hide Lewdness night-backed,
Murk, lurking, mists black your mirror!

To discount or disdain the womb
That births your Sex is just a game
To you:  Decisive’s the venom
With which you, for Death, must Eve blame.

Your Cognition is Treachery—
Unquestionably, pretty clear—
To inquest femmes for Lechery
Though your Lust is the cross we bear.

Thus, we’re “haughty” if we are “cool;”
Or we’re “naughty” if we are “hot:”
We’re guilty of “jilting” the fool
Who dreams Babylon’s Camelot!

To flout the penalties and Pain
That tutor your desires and Taste,
May every virgin loved in vain
Join ex-whores now Christian and chaste!

Since you are never satisfied,
You don’t deserve Satisfaction!
Look!  You play martyrs crucified
If a gal snubs your Attraction.

And you play goddamn crucifiers—
If a lover is not a nun,
Her charms “bought” oft by other buyers,
By whose words and arms she was won.

A poet’s crooning “errata”
Gets praised as a rogue’s “calculus,”
If swoons his “inamorata,”
And his “spoon” stirs her “chalice.”

A man commits “peccadilloes;”
But a woman’s sins are mortal:
Let her slouch on harem pillows,
And Eternity turns curtal—

No more expansive, but cut short—
Time being tough to hold to account—
And lovers are birthed to abort,
Their affairs mere tales to recount….

The misogynist hassles us,
His Hate founded in Arrogance;
Yet, Don Quixote castles us
In rarest temples of Romance….




*This "trancelation" of a piece by Sor Juana de la Cruz is NOT a translation. Instead, it is the result of guesswork about what the original Spanish poem may indeed be saying. The result is a surreal shadow or echo in English of the Spanish-worded piece.