Independence thinking doesn’t suit
refugees. My power’s absolute,
and your attempts to nudge me look so weak.
Minos will never obey an exiled geek.
I want the sun to watch her blood excel
the daily bathos of his red farewell!
No branch or brick should interrupt his view.
Let him see my labrys—my lily too—
enameled on its tiles. The grout should be
unicorn horn—the tiles, pure porphyry.
Daedalus agreed to build it and withdrew
to bake tiles in his workshop. No one knew
what he was really doing—no one but
Icarus, his idiot son, whose strut
mimicked King Minos unironically.
Daedalus claimed it was insanity
to kill the daughter of the sun: He’ll drive
his chariot here and burn us all alive!
Icarus arced a peach-fuzz overbite
and said that what his father said was right.
The latter baked red tiles he’d never use
(in case the king decided to peruse
his work) while pondering how best to escape:
Look at the sky, look at that blue agape
as though to ridicule my rash despair:
I’ll chart my freedom through the molten air
though Minos owns the land and stalks the sea!
He stretched the rim of ingenuity
to nudge what he called nature, gathering
various feathers to compose a wing
fit to lift a human: it resembled
the syrinx weary shepherd boys assembled
out of a stairway of ascending reeds.
Ruin lies plain where folly interbreeds,
but having made one wing, he made three more—
a smaller pair to make his dear heir soar.
Beeswax and string were the only ligaments
fastening these feathery supplements,
which, nonetheless, looked just like real wings:
mimesis captivates before it stings.
Icarus watched the slave who fetched their water
and mused on when to rape her freckled daughter.
When the engineer concluded that the wings
were done, he yammered insults at the king’s
bronze effigy, as feathers cast black feet
beneath his feet. He’d soon be free from Crete!
But first he warned his boy: We’re going home.
Now, Icarus, I’m serious: do not roam
away from me: stay on the middle track.
Look slightly down, forget the zodiac,
for if you fly too high, these wings will loosen—
too low, they’ll waterlog—you can die too, son!
Don’t aim at Boötes, Orion’s sword,
the Great Bear. Athens—that is your reward,
a city full of wisdom and delight—
just take my lead until we end our flight.
So Daedalus lectured as he hitched strange wings
on bony shoulders. Tightening the strings
and making sure that nothing was amiss,
he hugged the surly son who shunned his kiss.
Daedalus leapt from the parapets and flew
high above Knossos, indifferent to the view,
too worried that his son would fool and fall—
like a mother bird who follows protocol
and pokes her fledglings out of the warm nest,
shivering to think they cannot pass the test.
He said once more to follow father’s lead
and hollered dicta Icarus wouldn’t heed.
Daedalus often turned his head to see
whether he flew behind him dutifully.
But Icarus preferred illiterate Crete
to Athens, where men did nothing but compete
in talking bouts and flirt with girly boys.
Filial devotion couldn’t counterpoise
his discontent: his father was a coward.
Soaring above the gulls, he felt empowered
to ditch that geek at last. He mutely turned
back toward the Cretan palace, where he’d learned
ingratitude’s advantages. He spurned
the coward’s counsel, soaring ever higher,
keen to refute that sad Athenian liar.
Knossos revealed the neatness of its streets
and its roofs glimmering like gilded sheets
in unrelenting sunlight. Icarus
became the thrill and did not feel the pus
his blisters oozed before the sweet wax wept.
The feathers scattered, but the flapper kept
working his arms. The dimming roofs expanded.
He didn’t know the street where his corpse landed.