The Ultimate Riddle

A poem by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Leslie Monsour

The following piece appears in our Summer 2025 issue. Order it here.

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                in loving memory of Kate Light

        She is obscure and yet she’s clear;
still, ambiguities abound.
She keeps her truths from being found,
but, in the end, her truths appear.
She is at times the child of wit;
at others, sired by fantasy;
she’s known to breed great rivalry,
though she bestows no benefit.

        All are familiar with her name,
including tykes of youngest age.
Scholars and masters each engage
their keenest powers to guess her aim,
and there’s no crone who won’t accept
an invitation from this dame
to pass the hours in pleasant game
and prove her match, or prove inept.

        Philosophers burn midnight oil,
her cryptic data to explain;
the more bewildered they remain,
the harder still she makes them toil.
A bumptious brat, a teasing quiz,
a brazen vamp at bothering—
be she a thing or not a thing,
unriddle now just what she is.

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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (ca. 1547–1616) is the author of Don Quixote, one of the first modern novels, and a figure of tremendous importance in Hispanophone literary history.

Leslie Monsour is the author of The Alarming Beauty of the Sky, several chapbooks, The Colosseum Critical Introduction to Rhina P. Espaillat, and the new Kelsay Books collection, Before the Forest Burns. The recipient of five Pushcart Prize nominations and an NEA Fellowship, Monsour lives in Los Angeles, California, where she currently serves as Poet Laureate of Laurel Canyon.

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Answer: a riddle.

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