I, THE WORST OF ALL
Sister Juana Inés, she of the cross on her skirt,
of the jail within her bosom and hidden hips.
How she embroidered words in heaven.
She enjoyed love but played with it on the altars,
she invented as many names for it as faces,
she discovered claws, abysms, hell in it .
She wrote of love, which is like disarming it,
like untying knots that can’t be untied,
like eddies that are formed at the bottom.
To write of love and then let it go bodiless, empty,
Like a soulless armor in the midst of war,
like a war without hatred.
Sister Juana, adventurer of the Church,
tied to her time like a premonition,
skeptical about herself, insomniac in the convent,
pursuing her soul that can’t go on like that,
that rebels.
Without touching love, she loved without respite.
With so much flight in her pen,
her forehead was full of birds.
Sister Juana Inés,
after you there is nothing left to say.
All the rest is an emphasis.
After you
love does not hold any mysteries.