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).



Tuesday, March 15, 2011

I supply on you (Surto en ti)

To HTH, with love, from my Dad’s book Urgent poetry (Poesía de urgencia).

I supply on you (Surto en ti)

I am here with you for good.
My ship lies at the bottom of the sea.
A soft breeze blows over the soul.
I do not what to remember that I was absent.

The heart turned wiser in that grave exile
of your shadow.
If you walked with it, omnipresent,
in its wisdom only fit
your thoughts, your honest loyalty,
your devoted silences, your sweetness,
your little luminous white forehead.

And here I will stay.  Close to your voice.
Penetrated by you.  I supply on your whiteness.
To live, to die together.

1959.

at 7:00 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)