Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

The remark contrasts the abundance of beauty and meaning in ordinary life with the difficulty of translating that richness into art. Van Gogh frames “poetry” as something already present in the world—available to perception—while insisting that artistic creation requires more than sensitivity: it demands technique, labor, and the painful struggle to give form to what one sees. The sighing “alas” underscores humility and frustration, implying that the artist’s task is not to invent poetry ex nihilo but to capture it faithfully and powerfully. Read broadly, it speaks to the gap between inspiration and execution, and to the discipline required to turn lived experience into enduring work.