Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Pieter Bruegel

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

According to Brueghel

when Icarus fell

it was spring

a farmer was ploughing

his field

the whole pageantry

of the year was

awake tingling

near

the edge of the sea

concerned

with itself

sweating in the sun

that melted

the wings' wax

unsignificantly

off the coast

there was

a splash quite unnoticed

this was

Icarus drowning

~ William Carlos Williams ~

Musée des Beaux Arts

Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window
or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and
the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

~ W. H. Auden ~

High Flight

Malcolm Morley

Icarus

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high unsurpassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

~ Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee ~

Winged Man

Henri Matisse

Icarus

Winged Man

The moon, a sweeping scimitar, dipped in the stormy straits,

The dawn, a crimson cataract, burst through the eastern gates,

The cliffs were robed in scarlet, the sands were cinnabar,

Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar.

There stands the cunning workman, the crafty past all praise,

The man who chained the Minotaur, the man who built the Maze.

His young son is beside him and the boy's face is a light,

A light of dawn and wonder and of valor infinite.

Their great vans beat the cloven air, like eagles they mount up,

Motes in the wine of morning, specks in a crystal cup,

And lest his wings should melt apace old Daedalus flies low,

But Icarus beats up, beats up, he goes where lightnings go.

He cares no more for warnings, he rushes through the sky,

Braving the crags of ether, daring the gods on high,

Black 'gainst the crimson sunset, golden o'er cloudy snows,

With all Adventure in his heart the first winged man arose.

Dropping gold, dropping gold, where the mists of morning rolled,

On he kept his way undaunted, though his breaths were stabs of cold,

Through the mystery of dawning that no mortal may behold.

Now he shouts, now he sings in the rapture of his wings,

And his great heart burns intenser with the strength of his desire,

As he circles like a swallow, wheeling, flaming, gyre on gyre.

Gazing straight at the sun, half his pilgrimage is done,

And he staggers for a moment, hurries on, reels backward, swerves

In a rain of scattered feathers as he falls in broken curves.

Icarus, Icarus, though the end is piteous,

Yet forever, yea, forever we shall see thee rising thus,

See the first supernal glory, not the ruin hideous.

You were Man, you who ran farther than our eyes can scan,

Man absurd, gigantic, eager for impossible Romance,

Overthrowing all Hell's legions with one warped and broken lance.

On the highest steeps of Space he will have his dwelling-place,

In those far, terrific regions where the cold comes down like Death

Gleams the red glint of his pinions, smokes the vapor of his breath.

Floating downward, very clear, still the echoes reach the ear

Of a little tune he whistles and a little song he sings,

Mounting, mounting still, triumphant, on his torn and broken wings!

~ Stephen Vincent Benet ~

Waiting for Icarus

Hobson Pittman

The Spinster

Waiting for Icarus

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together

He said that everything would be better than before

He said we were on the edge of a new relation

He said he would never again cringe before his father

He said that he was going to invent full-time

He said he loved me that going into me

He said was going into the world and the sky

He said all the buckles were very firm

He said the wax was the best wax

He said Wait for me here on the beach

He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves

I remember the islands going dark on the sea

I remember the girls laughing

I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me

I remember mother saying: Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot

I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse

I remember she added: Women who love such are the worst of all

I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.

I would have liked to try those wings myself.

It would have been better than this.

~ Muriel Rukeyser ~