The Fall of Icarus
I looked up when Icarus came down –
but who would notice?
People are always crashing.
My neighbor's foot caught on the edge
of a furrow as he plowed
even as Icarus tumbled
headfirst down. He twisted his ankle
and tore up the ground with his hands.
While Icarus plunged down streaming,
my neighbor cursed the ants that confuse
the dirt, the feet that are blind
in their shoes and are always blundering.
The white wax ran down Icarus' arms in rivers;
he was a drenched man, a ruined,
a steaming man – I watched him fall
and my neighbor turn his ankle in the field.
That day Icarus was the toast of all the taverns.
I told everyone about the red runnels
on his shoulder where the wax plowed away
his skin. My old neighbor was there,
a cloth around his leg. We drank
a mug or two for Icarus who imagined
he could look God in the eye, another mug
for Icarus and then one for God Himself–
Here's to God's Eye which burned away
the wings of Icarus!
God's Eye! I felt wild thinking of it.
I went out to look at the sea, gilded
with the last of the light that took down
Icarus, bright as the annoyance in God's Eye
when he blazed away those wings.
I lost my head for a minute, dazzled
by light and drinks to daring and scraped
my knees when I took that tumble,
standing on tiptoe on the edge of the hill,
imagining the cut valleys, the lean spoon
of the isthmus and the shredded breezes
in the sky – how it must have looked to Icarus
as he spun down and God flicked me
off my hillock just for imagining.
Everyone crashes down around here.
-Dashka Slater-
First published in The Gamut #30, Summer 1990
Anthologized in Orpheus & Company, edited by Deborah DeNicola
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