how it bashed the nail and he bled to death—
when Polyeidos paused for breath,
Minos applauded: You’ve more than matched
the Athenian’s wit. I wish you the joy
of Pasiphaë and my so-called daughters.
I won’t measure their weight strictly.
That night the bard bedded Pasiphaë
while Daedalus failed to fall asleep.
Why did the robot in that moronic epyllion
receive the same name as his nephew?
How did he learn what happened in Athens?
Dawn brooded on Daedalus
till the bluing blackness blocked the starlight.
The sky is open: we’ll escape that way.
Let Minos own all: the air is free.
He deliberated outlandish arts
to renovate nature: he arranged feathers
of increasing length in lines that seemed
to have fledged aslant (on the slopes his father
had instructed him how to construct a syrinx,
how to gather the reeds while the goats were drowsy
and string them together like stairs for glowworms).
He bound his contraptions with beeswax and thread,
and he cambered each to imitate
genuine wings. While he was working,
Icarus frequently interfered
in that delicate process, plucking the down,
which the wind removed, or melting the beeswax
with his thumb, unaware the things he touched
in laughing play would prove deadly.
When he was certain the wings were finished,
Daedalus balanced his body between them
and hung in the wind. Then he warned his son:
Icarus, remain on the middle track:
the waves will weigh down your wings if you fly
too low; too high, and the heat will spoil them.
Fly in the middle. I command you, son,
not to gawk at Boötes or the Great Bear
or Orion’s sword. I’ll set the path:
just follow my lead. Then he lectured him
on flight’s precepts and fitted the strange
wings to his shoulders. As he warned the boy
and adjusted his work, his whiskers dripped,
and his lips trembled his last kisses
on Icarus’s reddening cheeks.
Then the father soared, afraid for his child—
like a bird who drives her downy chicks
out of the nest and into the air—
and inspecting his wings as he worked his own
he cautioned the boy to keep to his path.
Someone fishing with a fluttering rod
or some tired herdsman holding his staff
or some peasant leaning on his plough-handle
was amazed to see them sailing the sky
and believed they were gods. They left Delos
and Paros behind. Hera’s Samos
bulked at their left, while Lebinthos and Calymne —
rich in honey—rose at their right
when the boy discovered the bliss of reckless
flying and lashed by a lust for heaven,
deserted his father and flew too high.
The vehement sun’s proximity
melted the beeswax binding the feathers.
The sweet wax wept. He wagged his naked
arms and legs like oars but couldn’t
seize the breezes. The sky-blue sea
that bears his name imbibed his mouth
howling Daedalus! The unhappy father—
or one-time father—whimpered, Icarus!
Icarus, where are you? Icarus, tell me
where did you fall? He found feathers
cresting the waves, and he cursed his arts
(but his son was wearing a sapphire that fell
off the king’s slipper, and it called the dolphins,
who rescued the boy and bore him to Athens).
When a verbose partridge preening its feathers
in a muddy ditch saw Daedalus
lamenting his son, he sang for joy
and clapped his wings. He was as yet
the only partridge to appear in the world,
and his body had shrunken to the shape of that bird
in the recent past—a perpetual reproach,
and you earned it, Daedalus. Do you recall
the son your sister sent to your workshop
so you’d nurture his talent? She never guessed
how you’d mistreat him. Talos soon mastered
whatever you could teach him. He was twelve years old.
He went too far: when a fish’s spines
caught his attention, he crafted a row
of iron fangs, the first saw.
He was also the first to fasten a pair
of metal legs matched in length
so that one could rotate while the other
remained in place. He made you so jealous