you look weak. If I want to kill
my wife, you’ll stop me? I want her father
to see her blood excel his sunset!
May no branches blacken the dais!
Let him see my labrys—and my lily too!—
gleaming upon pure porphyry tiles.
And grind a unicorn’s horn for the grout.
Daedalus agreed to get to work,
and Minos gave him permission to leave
the palace and begin this project at home
since the drafting required quiet seclusion.
Icarus hadn’t inherited
his father’s intellect. He imitated
the nasal voice and the vapid swagger
that his father despised since they’d fled to Crete.
The king was so cool, his father so frumpy.
Daedalus muttered: Murdering the queen,
the sun’s daughter, is suicidal.
He’ll land his chariot and char us all!
Daedalus baked tiles and drafted schematics
just to be ready for a royal inspection—
all the while brooding on what to do.
The sky is open: we’ll escape that way.
Let him own everything: 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
instructed him how to construct a syrinx,
how to gather the reeds while the goats were drowsy
and string them together like a stairway for glowworms).
He bound his contraptions with beeswax and thread,
and he cambered each to imitate
genuine wings. With this work underway,
Icarus gazed at the girl whose mother
carried water from the well to their house
and imagined himself making her moan.
When the worker knew the wings were finished,
he balanced his own 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 undo them.
Fly in the middle. I command you, son,
don’t gawk at Boötes and the Great Bear
and 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. His whiskers were dripping
as he gave his work one last inspection.
He hugged a boy too big to accept
his father’s kisses. Fearing the worst,
Daedalus soared, and his son followed.
Somebody fishing with a fidgety rod
or a tired herdsman holding his staff
or a farmer reposing on her plough-handle
was amazed to see them sailing the sky
and mistook them for gods intent on mischief.
But the boy thought Knossos was better than Athens,
where men did nothing but make speeches
to fill their banquets with effeminate ephebes.
Filial piety forfeited what little
purchase it had on the pouting ingrate.
That geek couldn’t boss him above the gulls.
So with no farewell, he winged away
from his father and tried to return to Crete.
When Daedalus saw that his son was heading
southeast he chased him, but he soared higher
than his father would dare. He felt like a god
with the king’s palace a pinky fingernail
so far beneath him. Knossos displayed
a network of streets and numinous roofs.
But the morning cool couldn’t endure.
The boy didn’t notice the blisters knobbing
the skin that shuddered in sheer freedom.
That was a warning: the wax soon wept,
the feathers scattered, and his flapping arms
couldn’t arrest the roofs’ dilation.
He never knew where in Knossos he landed.