If you make time, music, and the night stand still,
everything, according to tradition and fantasy,
that love has the power to stop–
the paths of stars, the course of rivers,
the cautious pace of History and its guises–
make light too stay in this one moment:
the miracle of light at noon exalting
the grandeur of the world, the endlessness
of ocean before us, lasting forever.
Let this light accompany us always,
delightfully unchanging, in every kind
of exile life has to offer, in every hell–
so dark without you–that awaits.
Let the light be ocean, labyrinth, time,
and the solitude I share with you.
Born in Seville in 1957, Juan Lamillar is the author of ten books of poetry, including Entretiempo (Renacimiento, 2015), a volume of selected poems. Prizes for his poetry include the Premio Luis Cernuda, the Premio Vicente Nuñez, and the Premio Villa de Rota.
Don Bogen is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Immediate Song (Milkweed, 2019), and the translator of Europa: Selected Poems of Julio Martínez Mesanza (Diálogos, 2016). Recent poems appear in Poetry Northwest, The Yale Review, and other journals. His website is www.donbogen.com.
