Explore "A Certain Sergeant" by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Which reveals to a sergeant the conditions he does not possess
A certain sergeant armed himself / with a victorious halberd;
but then he and she ended up / as what I shall tell you now: / an "a" disappears from her,7 / and she becomes a packsaddle;
his "sar" turns into the mange, / and the silver does not appear.
6 A halberd is a medieval weapon consisting of an axe blade at the top of a long pole.
7 In Spanish the halberd is alabarda; if an "a" is removed, it becomes albarda, or packsaddle. Sergeant in Spanish is sargento; sarna is mange; argento is silver.