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, March 3, 2011

Anti-time (Antitiempo)

The gift of time.  Something I wish I could ask all my friends for my next birthday.  Wouldn’t it be amazing to have at least a couple more hours every day do do everything we'd like to do? From my Dad’s book Boundaries (Confines).

Anti-time (Antitiempo)

Back then, to me
time did not exist.

I did not use to count the days
by their name.

‘With you’ or ‘without you’ were two methods
to measure time
because time was not subjected
to a mutual language.

Seconds did not exist, nor minutes,
neither the burden of the hours.

Time was what it was
depending on whether you were
or were not beside me.

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