Hafiz poem and the Fertile Unknown

I found this poem by Hafiz, the 14th century Persian poet, to speak beautifully of the infinite richness of the fertile unknown - the place within us filled and alive with pure creative potential, just waiting to be cultivated and enacted out into the world. We tend to busy ourselves with distractions to avoid this unknown because we fear there is nothing in the "void." Yet the "empty void" is actually not empty at all - it is the life-giving, vibrant, fertile soil of invention, innovation, creative expression, transformation, wisdom and all things visionary. I think this fertile unknown can be a fun party at which to play and create if we let it.


In a Handful of God

Poetry reveals that there is no empty space.

When your truth forsakes its shyness,
When your fears surrender to your strengths,
You will begin to experience

That all existence
Is a teeming sea of infinite life.

In a handful of ocean water
You could not count all the finely tuned
Musicians

Who are acting stoned
For very intelligent and sane reasons

And of course are becoming extremely sweet
And wild.

In a handful of the sky and earth,
In a handful of God,

We cannot count
All the ecstatic lovers who are dancing there
Behind the mysterious veil.

True art reveals there is no void
Or darkness.

There is no loneliness to the clear-eyed mystic
In this luminous, brimming
Playful world.