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, April 21, 2011

Trip to you (Viaje a tí)

Tonight I’m celebrating poem number 80.  From my Dad’s book The window and the star (La ventana y la estrella).  Happy Easter break everyone!

Trip to you (Viaje a tí)

Via the stairs of the verse to you
ascends my poetry of fresh geometry
like my window to the cloud
the grey ship of my melancholy.

You, littoral of dreams: I, who travelled
all the routes of the melody,
I am travelling together with a querbín
to the land of your poetry.

And one day I will arrive, while the breeze
encourages your smile and my smile
for everything that I would have suffered.

Trembling and victoriously serious
I will cut the ropes of my ship
because then the trip has finished.
at 9:40 PM

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