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).



Friday, August 12, 2011

When God could not be sensed in the dew (Cuando Dios no podría sentirse en el rocío)

From my Dad’s book Twilight theory (Teoría del crepúsculo).

When God could not be sensed in the dew (Cuando Dios no podría sentirse en el rocío)

Like the ox goes round the water wheel
my verse goes round the walking life
under suns and nights of perennial memory.
But in order for the daily joy to persist,
it is necessary today, it was necessary yesterday
and it will be tomorrow
to cancel the purpose of the senses
and stop looking through the corner of the eye,
at least that way we will not perceive
piercing images that hatred builds
in the defeated man
destroyed by misery with its idle hours,
in the man without word
choking his useless pain
with the insignificance of his name,
in the enraged man who
condemns the hunger of his children
with cursing words,
in that man who cannot see
in each morning the light
of new hopes,
the man who bites sorrows every second,
the one who, although he wishes he could,
would never be able
to feel God in the dew,
in the morning sun or later in the day
not for himself but for those whom his heart
and the laziness of his hands command
Now I ask myself if it is possible
that the verse goes round the water wheel,
while there is a protest in other lips
and there is just truth in the protest.

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