Alone Looking at the Mountain, Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

Salvador Dali

Solitude

Alone Looking at the Mountain

All the birds have flown up and gone;

A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.

We never tire of looking at each other -

Only the mountain and I.

~ Li Po ~

Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

The birds have vanished down the sky.

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

Until only the mountain remains.

~ Li Po ~

Jabberwocky

Salvador Dali

Toreo Noir

Jabberwocky

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

~ Lewis Carroll ~

Restless

Salvador Dali

Woman at a Window

Restless

It is that perennial immateriality
dwelling between living and dying

crouched in the corners and grappling by the hinges

only to remain unseen;

We weave our web of what we believe we understand

of the relationship of our acts and events

only to remain misunderstood;

From that odd wisp of steam of heated discussions

to the urgent hiss of a new page calling;

I teeter on that thin ice --

That single space of uncertainty --

And I ask

“What am I doing here?”

~ Cecilia Borromeo ~

Salvador Dali

The Persistence of Memory

Time is too slow for those who wait,

too swift for those who fear,

too long for those who grieve,

too short for those who rejoice,

but for those who love, time is eternity.

~ Henry Van Dyke ~

Ozymandias

Salvador Dali

Remorse or Sphinx Embedded In The Sand

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

'Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

The War Prayer

Salvador Dali

The Visage of War

The War Prayer

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth

to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth

from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O

Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our

shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their

patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the

shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their

humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of

their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out

roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of

their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun

flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn

with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-

for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their

lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water

their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of

their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the

Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that

are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.

Amen.

~ Mark Twain ~