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).



Monday, February 21, 2011

Boundaries (Confines)

From my Dad’s book Boundaries (Confines).  Surviving a bad Monday.

Boundaries (Confines)

“Death wears me out, perpetually”. 
From Julio Platero Haedo. 
Borges’ citation.

There is still so much to do.
I have not fully heard
that eternal music
that I manage to perceive
before my time.
I have not read
a few pages and books
that sleep in libraries
anywhere in the world.
My son has not grown up
enough to reach
the sum of his dreams
and mine.

I am missing a verse,
I have not yet tasted the breath of other lips,
I know there is still a pair of eyes
to discover,
there is a road I must travel,
a door I must open,
a word that I have misplaced,
a smile,
a sunrise,
a down,
I still have to rescue an image
that wanders without identification
in the depth of my inner darkness.
There is still so much to do.
at 8:16 PM

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