Let Minos own all: the air is free.
So 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 glowworm stairway).
He bound his contraptions with beeswax and thread,
and he cambered their edges to imitate
living wings. While he labored,
Icarus had fun interfering
with his father’s project, plucking the down
the wind mussed or melting the beeswax
with his thumb, unaware the things he touched
in laughing play would prove deadly.
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 spoil them.
Remain in the middle. I command you, son,
don’t gawk at Boötes or the Great Bear
and Orion’s sword. I’ll set the path:
just follow my lead. As he lectured him
about proper flight, he fitted the strange
wings to the boy’s bony shoulders
and adjusted his work, his whiskers dripping,
his old hands trembling. Icarus caught
his last kisses, and lifted by feathers
his father soared, afraid for his son—
like a bird who drives her delicate chicks
out of the nest and into the air—
and he cautioned him to keep to his path
and instructed him in destructive arts,
eying his wings as he worked his own.
Someone fishing with a fluttering rod
or some tired herdsman holding his staff
or some planter leaning on her plough-handle
was amazed to see them sailing the sky
and believed they were gods. They left Delos
and Paros behind, and Hera’s Samos
bulked at their left, while Lebinthos and Calymne—
rich in honey—rose to their right
when Icarus discovered the ecstasy 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 like hapless oars but couldn’t
seize the breezes. The sky-blue sea
that bears his name imbibed his mouth
howling Daedalus! The unhappy father,
hearing too late, howled, Icarus!
Icarus, where are you? Icarus, where
should I search? He saw feathers
cruising the waves, and he cursed his arts.
The land where he buried the body is named
after the boy. When a verbose partridge
in a muddy ditch saw Daedalus putting
his son in the tomb, it sang its joy
and clapped its wings. It was as yet
the only partridge to have appeared in the world,
and it had only taken avian form
in the recent past—your perpetual
reproach, Daedalus. Do you recall
the son your sister sent to your workshop
for his education? She was unaware
of his fate. His mind was fit for learning
whatever you could teach. 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 iron legs equal in length
so that one could rotate while the other
remained in place. He made you so jealous