who bore him, told the master of machines,
Make me a dais worthy of a queen’s
decapitation. Daedalus replied,
Lord, I’m afraid we’d find it hard to hide
the bloodstains from her father’s eyes although
your slaves’ wrung rags would make the marble glow.
Let me suggest a safer way to bring
the queen to justice. All Greeks know your bling
from Syracuse to Chalcedon, but few
know where we get the ore. In search of new
sources of copper and gold, I once explored
the southern slopes of Ida, which afford
lithic riches to the chisel’s tap.
One valley’s cave, a gap within a gap,
is poor in ore and echoes, and no prayer
has ever violated its bat-hung air.
Helios won’t see what happens there.
With your consent, we’ll bind her to the rock
fanging the cave’s lost appetite and block
its mouth with boulders. Who will see her die?
Beetles never gossip in the sky.
Lord, if you wish, we’ll put her there tonight.
Minos exposed his orange overbite: