"The Loss of Illusions" Juana Inés de la Cruz

So then, un-maker of all my dear illusions,
now you have arrived here at the very last !
and since you are here in your own person,
I know for certain that the end has come to pass.
You have compelled my loss of my everything,
and that is not all either – i now believe
the price i paid  for receiving this advisement
could even be considered somewhat cheap.
No longer now will you go envying love -
those flattering and beguiling joys no longer yours
this being a rigorous lesson in disabusement
and the risk of further self-deceptions being slight.
I can now give up all my watching and waiting,
and this serves me as a secure consolation:
I find it to be in addition an alleviation
to the need of having to seek remediation.
In this same way, and in this very loss
I have found here something of a palliation.
One finds  that when the treasure has been forfeit,
the fear of forfeiture is likewise lost.
Having been left with nothing left to lose
I am now in a calmer situation:
the traveler finding herself already denuded
has no more fear of finding herself accosted.
But neither does this self-same liberty
serve me as any reliable advantage
and it should soon prove to be a detriment
if i should take it for yet another acquisition.
I no longer need the need for carefulness,
and of assets which tend to be at best uncertain:
and i  am determined that even this soul’s disposition
be considered only as yet another dispossession.