the sea and came down in a fertile land
whose people were amazed to see him stand
on air between his flapping rainbow wings.
Daedalus would teach them many things
while they taught him their somber speech bereft
of theta, xi, and psi. Their fields were cleft
in two spots nursing fame: a lake that gave
access to the underworld, and a cave,
which Daedalus consecrated to Apollo.
He taught the Italian shepherds how to hollow
stone with bronze, and soon the shallow cave
became the chamber where the Sybil would rave,
her verses echoing down the corridors
pouring between a hundred golden doors,
each embossed with different images:
gold sand clotting blood while arrows whiz;
breeze scalloping a rider’s purple cloak;
Rhea muddling honeybees spoke by spoke;
Daedalus dangling from unpainted wood;
a poet bleeding where a king just stood;
an orange overhanging a marble head;
an ogled calf whose hide each noon turns red;
the Kuretes devouring raw sheep;
worn rowers crawling up a beach to sleep;
stalactites pointing at a frozen snake;
the catkins keeping Orpheus awake;
a severed head before Hupakoë;
metal preserving what a king should say;
a red hand cupping an imprisoned ear;
a sower making red thread disappear;
billows bisected by a Cretan keel;
a snake watching her love’s new head unreel;
a nightjar swooping near a nightingale;
a contracting staircase only an ant could scale;
the cave that thwarted hungry Saturn’s plans;
a boiling kettle fetched by mittened hands;
Cumaeans worshipping a stranger’s wings;
gray feet suspended from black sutures’ rings;
porphyry octopuses on a scale;
a fruiting body through which new spores flail;
a throne room as loquacious as the Fates;
a poet musing on eight-membered weights;
a serpent rearing for her final hiss;
a pier, a gangplank, and a goodbye kiss;
an eyeless predator that aims by scent;
a princess gazing at a crinkled tent;
damp sarsens huddling to stutter pi;
poppies agape beneath a blackened sky;
red pelage hanging from a thickened hide;
a bolt only the king’s hands could slide;
Boreas glazing Scylla’s parapet;
a white bull living as an unpaid debt;
a bed of shells collecting dust for pearls;
some purple strands among thick onyx curls;
a sleeper suffering what he should’ve feared;
a flat ink Minos with a gabled beard;
arrows commanding royal blood to pour;
Pasiphaë suckling the Minotaur;
Minos deciding the Minotaur must die;
Pasiphaë in house arrest on high;
mother and son inside a mountain jail;
a woman carrying a wooden pail;
a fleshy kernel in a cyclops sieve;
the blood Asterion wouldn’t drink to live;
Asterion crawling through a jagged hole;
sky in the darkness like a distant scroll;
a scuffed ball shadowed by the caption “SMINTH”;
seaweed meandering like this labyrinth;
laurel leaves waving where hyponychia tore;
a greasy forelock on the queen’s clean floor;
a bronze colossus straddling a gate;
inventions not too hard to recreate;
Daedalus turning as the queen’s robe drops;
a famished cow with always rigid chops;
red termites wriggling a love machine;
a white bull entering a hidden queen;
a white bull walking on the sea’s blue crests;
an ink snail climbing between brown breasts;
a white bull’s dewlap warming polished stone;
Hupakoë searching Ida’s slopes alone;
an antlered woman drawing back a bow;
a regent writing her anagram in snow;
flat dolphins cutting through a bloody sea;
a new god suffering a syncope;
Theseus gulping indigestible straw;
Athena’s answer to the murder’s caw;
oarsmen refusing to pull Scylla aboard;
purple strands weaving a keratin cord;
Scylla’s flanks ruptured by six hard legs;
pale Akhlys oozing tears beneath green dregs;
the Telchines compelling ore to soften;
Hupakoë on deck beside a coffin;
a seagull hunting crabs by firelight;
Nisos watching a busted shell ignite;
Nisos watching his enemy decay;
Nisos gripping the lock that grew back gray;
Sophia studying Saronic ripples;
Helios licking his own daughter’s nipples;
a lamb’s blood dripping to a fingertip;
a gray beard jutting from a bloodless rip;
fauns, deer, and dryads trampling green grain;
a young king’s longing and a boy’s disdain;
Theseus prevailing in an unfair fight;
a death sentence that had to wait for night;
two hangmen struggling with Asterion;
moonlight exhibiting a scorpion;
Chaos rotating in its naked matte;
stag horns protruding where a crown once sat;
Theseus putting Ariadne ashore;
a fountain expiring with the Minotaur;
a boy aspiring to the sky’s blank vault;
arrows asperging waves with freezing salt.