Good morning Mr Eduardo (Buenos días Don Eduardo)

Eduardo Carranza (1913 - 1985) was a Colombian poet, journalist, university professor and diplomat. He was the precursor of the movement ‘Stone and Sky’. He promoted several cultural publications and he directed with major success the National Library. His poetry addressed three fundamental issues: his motherland, death and love. Dad wrote this poem in Carranza’s honour on May 13, 1974. From his book Commemorations (Conmemoraciones) on the last day of autumn.

Good morning Mr Eduardo (Buenos días Don Eduardo)

Here everything is fugacious like the breeze

of this May of winds and flowers.

The word rambles and spreads

but it goes away, life runs fast.

Those of us who say things are an echo

that survives distant days

though we insist and Earth listens to us.

You arrive and find under the palm trees

the same stream of water, the lavatory,

the mango trees with plenty of ripen fruit,

people passing hurriedly on the streets

and the news already door to door:

Eduardo Carranza has arrived with his garden

in perpetual harvest of songs.

The dry valley, the hill, the river,

will collect your verse in love

and will dress their silence for a party.

The shadow of the familiar almond trees

will shelter the rumouring flock

that your persistent flute brings to pasture.

You will see passing under the eaves

of your poetry of fresh geometry,

summer girls who imprison

in their eyes the sun of the lambs.

You will not be the forgotten anymore!

Cúcuta, May 31/74