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 28, 2011

The vague truth (Imprecisa verdad)

Here are the words from a man deeply in love.  To HTH from my Dad’s book The window and the star (La ventana y la estrella). 

The vague truth (Imprecisa verdad)

In this place starts the
vague truth of love that spins in my insomnia.
And a wind of poppies and ash
begins the horizon of your sky.

Your sky that is sweetness and is longing,
lily, song and light and sun and breeze,
white star, warm smile,
spike of the corn and flower and cloud and small stream.

In this place it will remain captive
the root of my song in love
like glowing coal, alive and burning.

And in a corner of my route one day
I will tell the wind the unpronounced verse
that only your poetry inspired in me.
at 8:40 PM

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