of blind arcades. The best craftsman,
Daedalus, worked out a way to build it
that would upset anyone’s orientation:
its winding would sire wandering eyes,
pirouetting on impatient paths—
like Phrygian Maeander, who flows for fun,
backward and forward, confusing his waves,
now to the source, now to the sea,
keeping his precarious current busy—
so the craftsman crammed uncountable paths
with circumlocution; the arcades were so tangled
it was difficult for Daedalus himself
to retrieve their only entrance and exit.
The Minotaur’s removal repaired
the king’s relish for the royal bed.
Pasiphaë groaned, and Glaukos crowned,
an orange scalp, a solar insult.
As the labyrinth arose, it deranged Knossos:
the harbor’s piers procreated,
despising ships and aspiring to weave
a lattice no one could navigate;
the marketplace multiplied stalls
until newcomers needed to pay
a guide to escape the scrum of peddlers;
the palace, once a patent hall,
became a place where a curious boy
could lose himself. Pasiphaë let
Glaukos roam. Glad to purge
orange from her sight, she consumed the blue
where sky caught sea across her sill.
The boy was playing with a ball named Sminth,
which he thought was really a rolling mouse.
Glaukos chased the cheese-lover
until the slaves lost track of him.
When Minos arrived for the midday meal,
he said he wanted to see the boy,
but nobody knew where he’d gone.
At the king’s command, his mercenaries
searched all Knossos, but nothing turned up.
Minos compelled Hupakoë
to go back to Greece with gifts for Apollo’s
priests at Delphi and induce them to find
where Glaukos was hiding. Harvest had ended,
and the sea would craze: if they safely reached
the mainland, they’d still be stuck in Phocis,
and the Pythia was a pitiless bitch.
But Hupakoë obeyed, and he bore the storms
better than Minos bore the waiting.
Minos wondered whether his wife did
something to Glaukos. Her grief smirked
through the mourning season.
He decided to die, / He decided to kill her,
but Hupakoë forestalled him. The Pythia announced
that Crete would welcome a weird creature
in the evening of the equinox,
and the one who had the wit to find
the metaphor that matched it best
would also find the orange heir.
A cowherd brought a calf to Knossos
that was white in the morning, vermilion at noon,
and black by sunset. Summoned to the court,
Daedalus watched the weird creature
an entire day yet didn’t know
what to call it. The king grew tired
of watching Daedalus watch the calf:
You’re supposed to be the big inventor!
Daedalus, make me a metaphor!
But the calf dazzled poor Daedalus:
the more he stared, the more he stuttered.
A bard was at hand, a hard up Argive
named Polyeidos, who played the harp
and sang sad songs for Pasiphaë.
Forgive me, Lord Minos, for meddling.
Permit me to suggest a metaphor.
Minos nodded at him. No one else,
will do my bidding today, it seems.
Am I right, De-de-de-daedalus?
Argive, make me a metaphor.
Polyeidos completed the task:
This mutant calf is a mulberry.
Minos smiled, Pasiphaë laughed,
and Daedalus hid his eyes with his hands.
Minos said: Argive, marvelous work!
But you’ve only begun. He gave the bard
a helmet, a sword, and a hive of keys.
Start in the palace: he’s probably hiding
somewhere nearby. If the boy’s not here,
you’ll have to look in the labyrinth.
But Asterion is always starving.
With a sword in your hand, you’ll have a chance.
Polyeidos went to the west garden
while the calf was still stippling white.
He walked the footpaths and waded the fishponds
and looked under every bush
that was high enough for a hiding place.
He proceeded to the cabins where the slaves kept
their gardening tools. Glaukos wasn’t
lurking amid the mildewed retreats
of rakes and pails, but Polyeidos
liked exploring this part of the palace:
he couldn’t hear the king’s tantrums,
just the Minotaur’s remote sobs—
a shady margin Minos disdained,
long addicted to grandiloquent glare.
Polyeidos almost forgot
that he roamed the garden on royal business.
He followed a wall aware its moss
had barred murals. Buzzing stopped him:
an owl swooped, and swarming bees
vacated their place: perched on a cellar
door, its cardiac disk ogling
Polyeidos, the owl sipped
the rainwater rilling the sill,
then screeched and flew off on silent wings.
Polyeidos supposed the sun
would set before he found the key
that fit the cellar; he considered using
his sword, but the king would accuse him of mischief.
The lock admitted the last key he tried.
In the murk he beheld a honey urn
and a boy’s ankles—brim antenna.
The feet fell off when the bard grabbed them.
He put them in his helmet and pulled the rest
of Glaukos out, his glaring hair
a viscid sheaf. Shouldering the boy
and clutching his helmet’s capsized skullcap,
Polyeidos transported the remains
back to the palace. A buzzing shroud
soon covered both the boy and his escort.
Minos added ocular salt
to the candied corpse, while the Minotaur’s mother
worked her balm in the bard’s collection
of fireless burns. The bee plunder
had discouraged decay, so the king couldn’t
doubt the body’s identity.
Daedalus began drafting the prince’s
mausoleum, but Minos refused
to bury Glaukos. I’ll bring him back.
I conquered all Greece, and the gods themselves
adore Minos: Death can’t keep him
without my approval. Hupakoë,