The Inner Valley

Your eyes are the homeland O f the tear and the lightning bolt, Silence that speaks, T empests without wind, S ea without waves, jailed birds, Somnolent golden beasts, I mpious topazes like Truth , Autumn in a forest glade W here light sings upon the shoulders O f a tree with leaves like birds . B each that the morning finds A s a constellation of eyes, B asket filled with fruits of fire, L ie that feeds, M irrors of this world, G ateways to the hereafter, Gentle pulse of the sea at noon, M oor, absolute  which blinks. ******* ✍  Octavio Paz ( Mexico City, 31 March 1914 ~ Mexico City, 19 April 1998).   *Translated by Horacio S.   ◙ Artwork: Moïse Kisling *******

"From the moment of my birth, the angels of anxiety, worry, and death stood at my side, followed me out when I played, followed me in the sun of springtime and in the glories of summer." ******* ✍   Edvard Munch   (Ådalsbruk, Løten, Norway, 12 December 1863 ~ Oslo, Norway, 23 January 1944). ◙ Artwork: 'The Sun' (1912) by Edvard Munch.

Everyone is a world, peopled by blind beings in dark commotion against the self the king who rules them. In every soul thousands of souls are trapped, in every world thousands of worlds are hidden and these blind, these underworlds are real and living, though incomplete, as true as I am real. And we kings and princes of the thousand possibilities in us are ourselves servants, trapped in some greater creature, whose self and being we grasp as little as our own superior his superior. Our own feelings have taken the color of their love and death. As when a mighty steamship passes far out, under the horizon, lying in the evening glitter- - And we don’t know about it until the swell reaches us on the shore, first one, then another, and then many which strike and boom until everything has become as before. – Yet everything is different. So we shades are troubled by a strange unease When something tells us that others have gone ahead, That some of the possibilities have been released.   *

" It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” ✍ William Faulkner (New Albany, Mississippi, 25 September 1897 - Byhalia, Mississippi, 6 July 1962). ◙ Artwork: Pieter Claesz

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse - The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff tha

Free man, you shall forever cherish the vast sea, The sea, that image where you contemplate your soul As everlastingly its mighty waves unroll. Your mind a yawning gulf seasoned as bitterly. You love to plunge into your image to the core, Embracing it with eyes and arms; your very heart Sometimes finds a distraction from its urgent smart In the wild sea's untamable and plaintive roar. Both of you live in darkness and in mystery: Man, who has ever plumbed the far depths of your being? O Sea, who knows your private hidden riches, seeing How strange the secrets you preserve so jealously? And yet for countless ages you have fought each other With hands unsparing and with unforbearing breath, Each an eternal foe to his relentless brother, So avid are you both of slaughter and of death. ******* ✍ Charles Baudelaire (Paris, France, 9 April 1821 ~ Paris, 31 August 1867).   ◙ Artwork: Winslow Homer

A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished. He who is grateful for the existence of music. He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology. Two employees who play a silent game of chess in a southern caf é . The potter, premeditating a colour and shape. A typographer setting this page with care, albeit perhaps disliking it. A woman and a man reading out the final tercet of a certain canto. He who strokes a sleeping animal. He who justifies or seeks to justify the wrong done to him. He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson. He who prefers others to be right. These people, anonymously, are saving the world. *******   ✍  Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 24 August 1899 ~ Geneva, Switzerland , 14 June 1986).

Boss of all bosses of the universe. Mr. know-it-all, wheeler-dealer, wire-puller, And whatever else you're good at. Go ahead, shuffle your zeros tonight. Dip in ink the comets' tails. Staple the night with starlight. You'd be better off reading coffee dregs, Thumbing the pages of the Farmer's Almanac. But no! You love to put on airs, And cultivate your famous serenity While you sit behind your big desk With zilch in your in-tray, zilch In your out-tray, And all of eternity spread around you. Doesn't it give you the creeps To hear them begging you on their knees, Sputtering endearments, As if you were an inflatable, life-size doll? Tell them to button up and go to bed. Stop pretending you're too busy to take notice. Your hands are empty and so are your eyes. There's nothing to put your signature to, Even if you knew your own name, Or believed the ones I keep inventing, As I scribble this note to you in the dark. ******* ✍ Charles Simic (Belgrade, Yug

Water hollows stone, wind scatters water, stone stops the wind. Water, wind, stone. Wind carves stone, stone's a cup of water, water escapes and is wind. Stone, wind, water. Wind sings in its whirling, water murmurs going by, unmoving stone keeps still. Wind, water, stone. Each is another and no other: crossing and vanishing through their empty names: water, stone, wind. ******* ✍  Octavio Paz ( Mexico City, 31 March 1914 ~ Mexico City, 19 April 1998). ◙ Artwork: Peder Balke

I wrote stone I wrote house I wrote town I shattered the stone I demolished the house I obliterated the town the page traces the struggles between creation and annihilation ******* ✍ Ryszard Kapuściński (Pinsk, Poland, 4 March 1932 ~ Warsaw, Poland, 23 January 2007). 

What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else In any balm or beauty of the earth, Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch, These are the measures destined for her soul.  ******* ✍  Wallace Stevens (Reading, Pennsylvania, 2 October 1879 ~ Hartford, Connecticut, 2 August 1955).   ◙ Artwork: Max Ernst 

This solitary hill has always been dear to me And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of The endless horizon. But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts Endless spaces beyond the hedge, An all encompassing silence and a deeply profound quiet, To the point that my heart is almost overwhelmed. And when I hear the wind rustling through the trees I compare its voice to the infinite silence. And eternity occurs to me, and all the ages past, And the present time, and its sound. Amidst this immensity my thought drowns: And to founder in this sea is sweet to me. *******    ✍  Giacomo Leopardi (Recanati, Papal States, 29 June 1798 ~ Naples, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 14 June 1837).   ◙ Artwork: Caspar David Friedrich.

We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are. Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family. Then back to the world, polished by soft whips. We dream; we don’t remember. Machine of the family: dark fur,  forests of the mother’s body. Machine of the mother: white city inside her. And before that: earth and water. Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass. And before, cells in a great darkness. And before that, the veiled world. This is why you were born: to silence me. Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece. I improvised; I never remembered. Now it’s your turn to be driven; you’re the one who demands to know: Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant? Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us; it is your turn to address it, to go back asking what am I for? What am I for? ******* ✍   Louise Elisabeth Glück (New York City, 22 April 1943). ◙ Artwork: Honoré D

There the hungry wolf with his teeth has ripped out the hot entrails. There the fugitive convict stone by stone has dug his grave. There the naked dead on a table of their bones have chopped up the moon. There the rutting stags, their antlers entangled, have turned into skeletons. There on hard arid ground sorcerers have woven a wedding feast banner from their veins. The groom is the wind, the bride is the mist. Amazingly in their cradle (a handful of earth and hope) a nameless flower opens. Let's go and name it: let it be called Dream. ******* ✍ Slavko Janevski ( Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, 11 January 1929 ~ Skopje, 20 January 2000). ◙ Artwork: Agostino Arrivabene

In the circus tent of a hurricane designed by a drunken god my extravagant heart blows up again in a rampage of champagne-colored rain and the fragments whir like a weather vane while the angels all applaud. Daring as death and debonair I invade my lion's den; a rose of jeopardy flames in my hair yet I flourish my whip with a fatal flair defending my perilous wounds with a chair while the gnawings of love begin. Mocking as Mephistopheles, eclipsed by magician's disguise, my demon of doom tilts on a trapeze, winged rabbits revolving about his knees, only to vanish with devilish ease in a smoke that sears my eyes. *******   ✍  Sylvia Plath (Boston, Massachusetts, 27 October 1932 ~ London, 11 February 1963). ◙ Artwork: George Bellows

When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset. The true meaning, ready to be decoded. What never added up will add Up, What was incomprehensible will be comprehended. - And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day Make no sense following each other? And on this earth there is nothing except this earth? - Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.  ******* ✍   Czesław Miłosz (Szetejnie, Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire, 30 June 1911~ Kraków, Poland, 14 August 2004). ◙ Artwork : Nikolai Astrup

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs As roots of baobab, as the hearth. The air will not deny you. Like a top Spin you on the navel of the storm, for the hoe That roots the forests plows a path for squirrels. Be ageless as dark peat, but only that rain's Fingers, not the feet of men, may wash you over. Long wear the sun's shadow; run naked to the night. Peppers green and red—child—your tongue arch To scorpion tail, spit straight return to danger's threats Yet coo with the brown pigeon, tendril dew between your lips. Shield you like the flesh of palms, skyward held Cuspids in thorn nesting, in sealed as the heart of kernel— A woman's flesh is oil—child, palm oil on your tongue Is suppleness to life, and wine of this gourd From self-same timeless run of ru

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head; does she hear something? Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Silence - this word also rustles across the page and parts the boughs that have sprouted from the word "woods." Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they'll never let her get away. Each drop of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment, surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns. They forget that what's here isn't life. Other laws, black on white, obtain. The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I

He loved her and she loved him. His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to He had no other appetite She bit him she gnawed him she sucked She wanted him complete inside her Safe and sure forever and ever Their little cries fluttered into the curtains Her eyes wanted nothing to get away Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows He gripped her hard so that life Should not drag her from that moment He wanted all future to cease He wanted to topple with his arms round her Off that moment's brink and into nothing Or everlasting or whatever there was    Her embrace was an immense press To print him into her bones His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace Where the real world would never come Her smiles were spider bites So he would lie still till she felt hungry His words were occupying armies Her laughs were an assassin's attempts His looks were bullets daggers of revenge His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible