of serving people. Seeking freedom,
he put on his wings and departed from the palace
at midnight, crossing the moon-stained waves
on a northerly course his compass nudged.
At sunrise he came in sight of a country
whose serene pastures compelled his descent.
The rustics worshipped him for his rainbow wings.
They had a lake that led to Hades
and a cave that reminded him of the Minotaur’s maze.
Daedalus learned the Latins’ language
while he taught them so many elementary matters.
From Daedalus, the Latins learned
how to mine copper and mix it with tin.
They fashioned chisels and transformed the cave
as Daedalus told them. No temple in Athens
would incite more awe. Its altars poured
perpetual smoke for Apollo Smintheus.
Later, the Sybil would sit inside,
and her ravings would run through its hundred hallways
and beat on the doors, each embossed with a different
blue-green picture of possible worlds:
a dark dreadlock on a duller dungeon;
a jerking bit bubbling foam;
Minoan keels gnawing the dusk;
Daedalus gargling on a deal gallows;
pious Minos pouting his palms;
the back of a head overhanging a brow;
a cowherd bringing a calf to Knossos;
ten snouts ripping raw sheep;
a crew rowing through rough weather;
stalactites pointing at a petrified snake;
oracular catkins cowling Orpheus;
rot progressing through a royal corpse;
the Telchines notching metal;
Cretans breaking a bronze image;
unspooled thread thawing in sunlight;
tracks on the waves all the way to Asia;
a wound unfurling a fresh body;
a nightjar jarring a nightingale;
a unicorn pelt pillowing a shell;
ten trunks ringing Rhea’s cave;
mittened Daedalus dumping a kettle;
rustics amazed by rainbow wings;
two feet sutured to suntanned legs;
three women weighed in a wobbling pan;
tiny tubes spurting spores;
a sonic shadow in the shape of a throne room;
a poet ogling a porphyry octopus;
a snake lifting its laminar snout;
a boy poised to spit in a bearded mouth;
launched spores lashing new whips;
a woman watching wind crinkle tents;
stones in a ring to stutter pi;
lichen nibbled on a lyre’s yoke;
curved keratin capping a nose;
the bolt that only budged for Nisos;
Boreas puffing on the parapets;
the altar the bull’s blood didn’t stain;
dusty scallop shells scaling the floor;
the proud highlights in a princess’s hair;
Scylla cutting the king’s bright lock;
a beard gabling like a billy goat’s;
Minos pouring in Hupakoë’s blood;
Pasiphaë sitting at her window;
Minos deciding the Minotaur must die;
the Minotaur trapped in a motherless maze;
bricks immuring a mountain cave;
a woman fetching water from a well;
a solitary kernel in a cyclops sieve;
a skull cracking on a crinkled wall;
Asterion crying as he crawls in a tunnel;
a blue bar seeming to breach black rock;
a boy playing with a ball near a fishpond;
seaweed looping littoral hooves;
a god’s nocks banging in a bone quiver;
clean tile smeared by a clammy forehead;
a whiskered face whacking the floor;
Daedalus descending on Sicily;
Pasiphaë’s robe rustling down;
a white bull noticing a newcomer;
termites inhabiting a hollow cow;
a white bull astride a wooden cow;
a white bull raising his right fore-hoof;
a scribe from Kasch scratching a door;
a white bull watching waves for the last time;
Hupakoë searching hills south of Knossos;
Poseidon floating his salty beard;
boulders leaching lengthening shadows;
Megaran gore gushing on dolphins;
a thunderbolt roasting parietal bones;
a regicide gnawing the royal nape;
petrified carrion impeding crows;
Cretans pushing a princess down;
a coiling grid with keratin fangs;
multiplied lenses releasing eyelids;
a Megaran mirror melting in a hearth;
Minos watching metal harden;
Hupakoë pacing a ship’s deck;
Megara ablaze while a gull tarries;
a crab melting in a miniature pyre;
a fly-covered corpse on a beach;
monochrome hair on a monarch’s head;
Sophia blending his blood and seed;
Helios licking dilated nipples;
an imposter’s palm puncturing a kidney;
a beard blazoning a bloodless rip;
toppling canopies terrifying dryads;
a young Minos with Miletus;
Athenian flesh feeding Asterion;
Daedalus daring to disagree;
the sun’s horses on Pasiphaë’s tower;
the moon beside a mammoth scorpion;
a quilt embroidered with a broad circle;
a king’s reflection flitting on water;
a solitary woman weeping on sand;
a cool basin cracked by sunlight;
feathers unbinding as beeswax melts;
arrows scraping the sky’s arches.