'In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away <br />Quite leisurely from the disaster...' <br />—W.H. Auden, from *Musée des Beaux Arts* <br /> <br />He rose to the caws of housewives, the joy <br />of rooks. And before he could unglue his eyes, <br />he whistled a prayer to the cold grey wind, <br />high on years of scrumptious insanity. <br />The Bagman in the gutter, the Hunchback <br />on the bench, the Scarecrow under the news, <br />watched him take off through the willows, <br />past Jack and the Beanstalk and Mothergoose. <br /> <br />Flapping his wings at the jackdaws, quacking <br />at the swifts, laughing at the landlocked joggers, <br />he soared beneath the bright hypocrisies <br />of a cloud towards the vagaries of God <br />in the vicinity of the blocked out sun, <br />but the ants below mistook his cries for dance <br />and his wingéd tears for a bucket of rain <br />amid a gehenna of swept up debris. <br /> <br />No sun had cast him down with melting wings <br />as he dove towards the duckweed in the pond, <br />watching the little sailing ships depart. <br />And only the Bagman in the gutter, <br />the Hunchback on the bench, the Scarecrow <br />under the news—saw Poseidon hug him <br />amid bubbles and ambiguous foam <br />in a heaven that does not mock our tears.<br /><br />Leo Yankevich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-birdman/
