Today is the day before my Dad would have turned 80 and I feel selfish and I feel sad and I feel empty because I realise I never understood the sadness that wrapped around his joyful and strong persona. I wish I could ask him: “What is it Dad?”, “What pains you?”, “How can I help?” but I can’t know. I am so sorry. All I can do is to continue spreading his beautiful words into my world and make it his and let him see all of it, and share with him who I am and who I’ve become and who I wish I could be. This is a poem from my Dad’s book Twilight Theory (Teoría del crepúsculo). One day before his 80th birthday. I love you Dad, I miss you.
Oh hill of light! (Oh colina de luz!)
My steps travelled through a long and tenebrous road.
Now, from the hill of light where I find myself
strong, forever safe, my eyes are amazed.
An abyss called me from each side and from the depth
foul smells ascended and wrapped around me mistaken with
the grey night mist and the
dark and freezing days.
There are no other words to say “I am sad”,
“it hurts to live”, “I have lost hope”,
“my dreams are dead”, “this anxiety will kill me”.
There is no other language. These words summarise the story
of a man who seeks with anticipation and watches over the secret
of the defeats of his alienated heart.
There was no sign of a course to follow or guiding stars.
To repeat and repeat some of the same old signs,
the same complaint, the infertile and persistent mention
of what is lost, to recount the days that have passed,
now irrecoverable, to return via a blind tunnel
searching for the fugitive time, that hurricane that throws us
into eternity.
To continue saying the same old worn out words
“I am sad”, “my dreams are dead”, “this anxiety will kill me”
or to shut oneself away in a circle of silence
and of doubt and to raise a wall that stops feeling the joy
of the friend who does not know how to cry with our eyes
or to sit by a door to wait for a tram with no itinerary.
Familiar roads and words and tram have passed
and in their grit and their sounds and their rails
a blistering and energising sun gives light that invigorates one’s being.
I have learnt many things: I now know how to say
“love”, “joy”, “pleasure” and I practise melancholy
like a daily exercise, diffused in
the beautiful summers in Earth.
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