Why do this?

My father, José Luis Villamizar Melo, passed away in my home town of Cúcuta, Colombia, in August last year. The law and economics were Dad's profession, but literature, history and academia his passion. He wrote and published several books, articles and book chapters. The thing is that so many people have missed out on his work, particularly on his beautiful poetry, which he wrote in Spanish prior to the world wide web. So I thought, what a better way to keep Dad's legacy alive than to bring his writing beyond his world and share it with mine. That is why I am translating over 250 of my Dad's poems to English and publishing them here, one a day, Monday to Friday during 2011 (Dad, a family man, always believed that you shouldn't work on weekends).



Thursday, January 13, 2011

Love poem number 2 (Poema de amor 2)

To my best friend on the 13th of the month, from my Dad’s book La Tarde Festejada (The celebrated afternoon).  Please post it on the wall of someone you love deeply.
Love poem number 2 (Poema de amor 2)
Let me enjoy and suffer
these brief moments
alone with you.
The clock violates the secret spaces
that we can finally share.
Make them safer,
more intense, give them your voice,
your laugh,
the blue flame that escapes your eyes,
the fever of your skin,
white and flushed
and fine like a petal.
Let clumsy words
roll around the world.
Nobody will ever know
the truth about these hours
which lead roles
are you and me and the silence
of the fugitive pleasures
and the transient happiness.

2 comments:

  1. Beautiful! from another Hopeless Romantic.. Such a wonderful project Andrea's. You are a legend x

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  2. "The clock violates the secret spaces..."

    I love this line. Boring, mundane things like seconds and minutes and hours intruding on those special moments you wish would never end (but you know they have to).

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