April 1 is the start of National Poetry Month.  Since 1996, this literary celebration honors the significance of poetry in world culture, according to poets.org.  Each school day this month, the King Street Chronicle will publish one poem to recognize this month-long commemoration of poetry.

Quéjase de la suerte: insinúa su aversión a los vicios y justifica su divertimento a las Musas
por Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz (1648? – 1695)

¿En perseguirme, mundo, qué interesas?

¿En qué te ofendo, cuando sólo intento

poner bellezas en mi entendimiento

y no mi entendimiento en las bellezas?

Yo no estimo tesoros ni riquezas,

y así, siempre me causa más contento

poner riquezas en mi entendimiento

que no mi entendimiento en las riquezas.

Yo no estimo hermosura que vencida

es despojo civil de las edades

ni riqueza me agrada fementida,

teniendo por mejor en mis verdades

consumir vanidades de la vida

que consumir la vida en vanidades.

Sister Juan Inés de la Cruz, a nun, writer, and philosopher, originally wrote this poem in Spanish.

Complain about luck: hints at your aversion to vices and justifies your amusement to the Muses
by Sister Juan Inés de la Cruz (1648? – 1695)

When you pursue me, world, why do you do it?

How do I harm you, when my sole intent

is to make learning my prize ornament,

not learn to prize ornament and pursue it?

I have no treasure, and I do not rue it,

since all my life I have been most content

rendering mind—by learning—opulent,

not minding opulence, rendering tribute to it.

I have no taste for beauties that decay

and are the spoil of ages as they flee,

nor do those riches please me that betray;

best of all truths I hold this truth to be:

cast all the vanities of life away,

and not your life away on vanity.

Contributed by Señora Montserrat García, Upper School Spanish Teacher and Upper School World Languages Department Chair

Featured Image by Lé-Anne Johnson ’21