Minos decided to construct a maze
to shield the monster from the people’s gaze.
Minos employed the world’s best engineer
to make that furry bastard disappear
deep in a copious network of corridors
whose bending walls would start to look like floors
to anyone who wandered there for long:
even the bricks would wander, like a song
without refrain or like the Phrygian river
who frustrates boatmen seeking to deliver
punctual cargo: Maeander flows for fun,
backward and forward; his currents rarely run
from source to sea directly but loop back
doodling many a marshy cul de sac—
Daedalus made the maze so difficult
that it was necessary to consult
his blueprints for the engineer to find
a way out of the prison he designed,
in which the Minotaur patrolled the mortar
joints for the culms he craved. The queen, though a daughter
of Helios, was locked inside her tower,
where she retained a little bit of power.
Each of her human children were permitted
to visit, since Deucalion was dim-witted,
Phaedra, feckless, and her sister hated
the queen so fiercely Minos speculated
she’d shun her mother till her funeral.