Daedalus says: <br /> <br />Go on sonny but remember that you are walking and not flying <br />the wings are just an ornament and you are stepping on a meadow <br />that warm gust is just the humid earth of summer <br />and that cold one is a brook <br />the sky is full of leaves and small animals <br /> <br />Icarus says: <br /> <br />The eyes like two stones return straight to earth <br />and see a farmer who knocks asunder oily till <br />a grub which wiggles in a furrow <br />bad grub which cuts the bond of a plant with the earth <br /> <br />Daedalus says: <br /> <br />Sonny this is not true The Cosmos is merely light <br />and earth is a bowl of shadows Look as here colors play <br />dust rises from above the sea smoke rises to the sky <br />of noblest atoms a rainbow sets itself now <br /> <br />Icarus says: <br /> <br />Arms hurt father from this beating at vacuum <br />legs are getting numb and miss thorns and sharp stones <br />I cannot keep looking at the sun as you do father <br />I sunken whole in the dark rays of the earth <br /> <br />Description of the catastrophe: <br /> <br />Now Icarus falls down head first <br />the last frame of him is a glimpse of a heal childlike small <br />being swallowed by the devouring sea <br />Up above the father cries out the name <br />which no longer belongs to a neck or a head <br />but only to a remembrance <br /> <br />Commentary: <br /> <br />He was so young did not understand that wings are just a metaphor <br />a bit of wax and feathers and a contempt for the laws of gravitation <br />I cannot hold a body at an elevation of a great many feet <br />The essence of the matter is in having our hearts <br />which are coursed by heavy blood <br />fill with air <br />and this very thing Icarus did not want to accept <br /> <br />let us pray<br /><br />Zbigniew Herbert<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/daedalus-and-icarus/
