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).



Friday, January 28, 2011

The tree, in time, under the wind (El árbol en el tiempo bajo el viento)


And with this poem from my Dad’s book Urgent poetry (Poesía de urgencia) I wish you a great weekend.  See you on Monday.

The tree, in time, under the wind (El árbol en el tiempo bajo el viento)

The wind does not return.  The tree plays
its symphony of freezing leaves.
And the wind blows by and the breezes
follow one another endlessly.
The tree survives in the vibratile environment.
Time does not return.  The tree changes
its youth, blossoming in fruits
and seeds.  Then autumn arrives
and time prolongs in the grapevines.
Tree and time are almost like brothers.
The tree in the wind and in time
comes closer than winter and summer
and the vague memory of spring.
Ripe fruit around it.
And it is already eternity in the morning
when the seed sprouts.

To Luis Anselmo and
Mercedes.
Cúcuta, July 11-75
at 7:45 PM

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