An old woman who was considered beautiful (Sonnet 1) - Diego Hurtado de Mendoza

     You have, Mistress Aldonza, three times thirty years,

three strands of hair, no more, and just one tooth,

breasts more fitting for a grasshopper,

where spiderwebs and scratches abound.

     On your skirts, toques, and dresses are found

less wrinkles, to be sure, than on your brow;

your mouth is rent asunder and so brave,

that two seaports cannot compete in size.

     Your song resembles the mosquito's or the frog's,

your shank is a real turd, or like a dead man's,

your eyesight is like an early morning owl's.

     You smell like pickled herring,

your back befits a goat and is as graceful

as a skinny and well-plucked duck.

     This is your portrait;

of all you hear you lack nothing:

pray tell what you lack to be a beauty.

---

Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1504 - 1575) Spain

Translated by

Source: Cervantes and the burlesque sonnet, Adrienne Laskier Martín, University of California Press,  1991