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).



Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Supreme foundation (Raíz suprema)

A gift for anyone who is in love to give to their loved ones, from my Dad, the ultimate romantic. From his book The window and the star (La ventana y la estrella).

Supreme foundation (Raíz suprema)

You: the one who adorns my dreams with colours.
You: absent, diluted, omnipresent.
You: like an adolescent territory
where the logs of my cross were born.

You: the one with the pure and elemental voice.
You: soul and conscience of my life.
You: who ease the bitterness of my solitude
in your arms.

You, alive like a burning flame
that stokes up my impatience and my weakness,
and at the same time you are my master.

And like that my heart insists
on making of your fugitive shadow
the centre and supreme foundation of its song.
at 4:30 PM

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