Salvador Dali’s Down the Rabbit Hole is a poem inspired by a Salvador Dali painting. It is included in an anthology entitled Voices: 27 Poets from around the world, published in October 2019.

The recording was produced at Porchlight Studios by Niall Woods.

Salvador Dali’s Down the Rabbit Hole
© Orla Grant-Donoghue

Act 1: Faint Hues
Blue tint of falling tears
soak the canvas in muddy blue.

Burnt orange of earth
mixes with white,
Unsure of what to become.

Like shadows made by an unseen hand,
Faint pencil lines reveal form
where all is in the eye of beholders.

Act 2: The Curtain Draws

Earth flies past,
A rabbit leaps,
a little girl falls
down
and down
to a place where there’s no light.

Her breath slows,
She casts her dreams into the wide open,
blinks and stares,
waiting to be lit by magic.

Act 3: A New World
Nothing makes sense in
this dream-like world
Where rabbits talk and
mushrooms beckon.

The little girl skips along,
Her breath slows,
Her heartbeat quickens.
She grows,
She shrinks.

She
Takes
It
All
In.

The Reflective Eye
by Orla Grant-Donoghue
(after the sculpture by Emer O Boyle at University College Dublin)

Can I hide in this place
where reality is multiplied,
amplified
between beams of light
magnified,
where mirrored retinas
reflect inner lives,
where jet streams carry truth
in the half light,
where moonbeams and sunlight
can find me
with
or
without
my sight?

Thank you to Éamon Mag Uidhir for including my poem The Reflective Eye in FLARE 12. More information on where FLARE is available is at http://www.flare.ie The stunning cover art is by Solus (Instagram @solus.art). The sculpture is by Emer O Boyle at University College Dublin. This poem aims to raise awareness about living with a rare eye disease.