“she smiled thinking of that demand he had…” translated by caitlin adams Pyramidal, funereal and Earthen Born like shadow and aimed in vain Like the raised point of an obelisk Set towards the sky… “First Dream,” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz She smiled thinking of that demand he had, like those made by upper class Mexican families, to live in the rich, yet dull suburbs of Paris, or to only play the most noble and demanding sports. Despite everything, she loved his miniscule apartment, shaped like the cubed roofs of the 16th Quarter, where she had visited him from time to time. From high up, one could see the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, the bateaux-‐mouches crossing the ceiling throughout the night, and in the summer, the same bits of phrases made for tourists, in some language or another, could be heard through the open window twenty times a day … the Bir Hakeim bridge was built in eighteen sixt… Between each embrace, they read fragments of Sor Juana poems, and drank avocado shakes. These three pleasures emanated from the same desire for total voluptuousness, easy in that exoticism without voyage, in 181
Cityscapes
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