The Inner Valley

Leave the familiar for a while. Let your senses and bodies stretch out Like a welcomed season Onto the meadows and shores and hills. Open up to the Roof. Make a new water-mark on your excitement And love. Like a blooming night flower, Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness And giving Upon our intimate assembly. Change rooms in your mind for a day. All the hemispheres in existence Lie beside an equator In your heart. Greet Yourself In your thousand other forms As you mount the hidden tide and travel Back home. All the hemispheres in heaven Are sitting around a fire Chatting While stitching themselves together Into the Great Circle inside of You. ******* ✍ Hafiz (Shiraz, Persia, approx. 1320/1325 ~ Shiraz, approx. 1388/1389) ◙ Alois Schönn

“Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum… Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it. I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream." ******* ✍ Vincent van Gogh (Zundert, Netherlands, 30 March 1853 ~ Auvers-sur-Oise, France, 29 July 1890). Letter to Theo van Gogh {Etten. on or about Friday, 23 December 1881}. ******* “Aunque a menudo me encuentro sumergido en las profundidades de la miseria, aún existe sosiego, pura armonía y música dentro mío. Veo pinturas o  dibujos en las cabañas más humildes, en las esquinas más mugrientas. Y mi mente es impelida hacia estas cosas con un impulso irresistible... La poesía nos rodea en todas partes, pero llevarla al papel es, ah... no tan fácil como mirarl