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 20, 2011

Sleeping candle (Duermevela)

Here is a short poem from my Dad’s book Frontiers (Confines).  I wonder which one of his two boys he was thinking about…
Sleeping candle (Duermevela)
While my baby boy sleeps
you sleep and I write
these minimal memories
that I will hide in a book,
a book that is foreign to the rhetoric
of brand new times.
I do not anticipate stern readers
nor critical reviews
and when you awake
and my child has grown
you will both understand
the peculiar style I use
to express my sorrow.
at 7:52 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)