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,
like Phrygian Maeander, who flows for fun,
backward and forward, confusing flotsam,
now to his source, now to the sea,
keeping his precarious current busy—
so the craftsman crammed uncountable paths
with circumlocution; the arcades were so tricky
it was difficult for Daedalus himself
to retrieve their only entrance and exit.
There Minos trapped the Minotaur,
but he let Pasiphaë live alone
under house arrest in her high tower.
He made a mistake in permitting her natural
children to visit, a chore he supposed
that Ariadne would always shirk.
He knew the others were innocuous:
his son and heir was an air-headed sot,
and beautiful Phaedra feared him too much.
He failed to give sufficient thought
to what his foreign wife would inspire.