Hombres necios que acusáis (Redondillas / "You Foolish Men")

Foolish men who accuse women without cause, she begins, and then, stanza by tightening stanza, she springs the trap: you court a woman and then despise her for yielding, you fog the mirror yourself and complain the glass is not clear, like a child who conjures a bogeyman and then lies awake in terror of it. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote these redondillas from inside a convent in colonial Mexico, a self-taught nun the churchmen would spend years trying to silence.