the regicides rumor had planted
in his memory, but the methods used
were too dangerous, and the alternatives
he sketched in his head were hardly safer.
He dreaded sleep, but his sliding eyelids
and the moon’s rising directed him back
to his vacant bed, where a vicious dream
had returned every night to nullify rest:
delirious with plague and leaching pus,
frantically failing to find the exit
while plinths were casting their columns at him
and bricks became debris at his heels
until he broached a buried sea
of mice and fell for more fathoms
than numbers he could name, but never touched
the sea’s bottom or ceased hearing
arrows scrape the sky’s arches,
flecking furred waves with freezing salt.
But this night conducted a different dream,
one that resembled what his exile
taught him to expect: tedious ordeal
after tedious ordeal. Daedalus knew
that his labyrinth had prevented a revolt certain
to depose Minos—or postponed it, at least.
But Minos refused to promote or reward
the engineer, whose knowledge annoyed him.
He knew for certain he’d never receive
the rewards and the esteem his work merited.
Pasiphaë appeared sympathetic.
She helped him escape while the whole palace
was distracted by her bard’s errand.
No invention was necessary:
she led the Athenians to a tholed dinghy,
which would carry them farther than the king would follow—
or so she thought. The Athenians thanked her
and their rowing achieved a regular rhythm
and it seemed that the sea would suffer them to cross it
till black clouds began blearing the west.
The dinghy splintered, and Daedalus presumed
Icarus had drowned, ignorant of the sapphire
the boy removed from his mouth to his fist,
rallying dolphins: he rode the largest,
tearing the waves to the wider horn
on the western side of the snail-headed island.
Meanwhile, his father was mourning him,
mingling his tears with the mindless brine.
Sometimes swimming, sometimes drifting,
sometimes bobbing his bare terror,
Daedalus reached a rocky island
where few trees softened the sun’s combustion.
He found no human inhabitants,
but despite the apparent paucity
of seeds and bugs, birds abounded.
Daedalus could only identify
a few of the species that flew by him:
the bunting, the thrush, the brambling,
the cuckoo, the comorant, the curlew, the smew,
the chough, the chiffchaff, the chaffinch, the pochard,
the firecrest, the crane, the crake, the crow,
the egret, the avocet, the eagle, the ibis,
the hawk, the hoopoe, the heron, the harrier,
the jaeger, the jay, the jackdaw, the quail,
the kite, the kestrel, the kingfisher,
the linnet, the tern, the loon, the twite,
the magpie, the martin, the moorhen, the mallard,
the nightjar, the gannet, the nightingale,
the osprey, the owl, the oriole, the ouzel,
the pintail, the shearwater, the partridge, the plover,
the rook, the redstart, the robin, the lark,
the wryneck, the ruff, the raven, the wren,
the sandgrouse, the serin, the sanderling,
the shelduck, the shag, the shoveler,
the prinia, the snipe, the snowcock, the pratincole,
the sparrow, the spoonbill, the sparrowhawk,
the skylark, the swan, the swamphen, the swift,
the wheatear, the wagtail, and the water rail.
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 a stairway for glowworms).
The island’s windrow weeds supplied
the lack of string. He stretched his arms
and flew farther than the king would follow—
or so he thought. When Sicily loomed,
he decided to descend on its southern pastures,
and Kokalos, the king of Kamikos
gave the stranger a grand welcome.
But Daedalus could delight in nothing
with his son on the way to the sea’s bottom
or adrift toward a coast where his corpse would fester
in the gouging noon while the gulls nibbled.
Kokalos wanted to keep Talos
from leaving his court. The king reasoned
that some day the stranger would stop mourning
and resume making marvelous contraptions.
The king promised his projects would lack
no materials Talos required.
For Talos was what the winged man told
people to call him when came to the ground.
He never mentioned Minos or Crete
but said that he flew with his son from Athens,
whose jealous ingrates had ejected them.
Mournful Talos demurred for a year
before setting a foot in the workshop
Kokalos gave him. He began designing
a gilded temple for Latona’s son,
whose rattling arrows had riddled his sleep
since he left Athens. Relieved from nightmares,
Talos invented a device that could measure
time’s progression on a grooved dial
and required no sunlight or slave labor.