Explore "This Afternoon, My Love" by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In which she responds to jealous suspicion with the rhetoric of weeping
This afternoon, my love, when I spoke to you, / I could see in your face, in what you did, / that you were not persuaded by mere words, / and I wished you could see into my heart;
and Love, assisting me in my attempt, / overcame the seeming impossible, / for among the tears that my sorrow shed / was my breaking heart, liquid and distilled.
Enough of anger now, my love, enough;
do not let tyrant jealousy torment you, / nor base suspicion roil your serenity / with foolish specters and deceptive clues;
in liquid humor you have seen and touched / my broken heart and held it in your hands.
3 The reference is to the classical god of love.
4 Humor here refers to a bodily fluid.