She Attempts to Minimize the Praise Occasioned by a Portrait of Herself Inscribed by Truth--Which She Calls Ardor by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

This that you gaze on, colorful deceit,

that so immodestly displays art’s favors,

with its fallacious arguments of colors

is to the senses cunning counterfeit,

this on which kindness practiced to delete

from cruel years accumulated horrors,

constraining time to mitigate its rigors,

and thus oblivion and age defeat,

is but an artifice, a sop to vanity,

is but a flower by the breezes bowed,

is but a ploy to counter destiny,

is but a foolish labor, ill-employed,

is but a fancy, and, as all may see,

is but cadaver, ashes, shadow, void.

From “Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Writings” by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden (Penguin Classics: 254 pp., $12.95 paper)