The Fall of Icarus - Pieter BreugelIcarus fell from clear sky blue eyes streaming
Tears of joy confirmed his unfulfilled dreaming
Daedalus watched from his mediocre flight path
Torn between sorrow and uncontrollable wrath
The road that he’d fashioned from rags of his hope
From cynicism, cold ethics and moral isotope
With a half-life of nothing and a head full of smoke
Was a wing and a prayer, a trick made of rope
A trick of the light perhaps a mental mirage
Allowed him to see from the eyes of the fallen
Permitted his viewpoint to include the visage
Of the moth as he hit the flame of his calling
The trajectory of the fall does not define the life
In any terms other than the cold line of time
Whose calculated construct cold as a knife
Leads us on with promise of diamonds in the mine
2 comments:
Breugel’s Flemish Icarus is a fascinating figure
When transplanted from the magic-laden South
To the cold and rational shores of the Netherlands
He becomes but a mere footnote on the bottom
Of a painting glorifying a hardworking peasant
Who stays on shore to labor, dreaming of Cockaigne
I liked reading this again today, it made my mind work.
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