Chapter 0 - Breughel's Icarus
Submitted November 14, 2013 Updated November 30, 2013 Status Complete | I recently participated in a workshop at my school which dealt with Ekphrasis, or poetry inspired by art objects. This was one of my submissions. It is Interrogative Ekphrasis, inspired by Breugel's painting of the fall of Icarus. |
Chapter 0 - Breughel's Icarus
Chapter 0 - Breughel's Icarus
Is it just another day
On the brown and crowded shore?
Does the mule in the narrow field
Hear anything odd?
Does the fisherman have a catch?
Do the sheep not startle?
Where rove the shepherd’s eyes—
Towards a bird? A cloud? Your father?
Was it worth it?
Did you see the world from your winding prison walls
In this same crunched perspective—
Narrow edge by narrow edge,
And barely room for beasts or man?
Is it accident that safe and homey shores appear so small,
And skies and seas so vast?
Was it cold? Was it bracing, thrilling, energizing,
To fly among the clouds—
Crystal breaths of ice, storehouses of rain—
Where gods and birds and Pegasus may tread?
Were you drunk with joy to fly so high,
After the claustrophobic horror
Of the half-man monster’s maze?
Why lies the sun so low?
They say you flew too far,
The air too hot,
Your wings clipped by Helios’ flames.
Is it hubris, then, to reach for the horizon?
On the brown and crowded shore?
Does the mule in the narrow field
Hear anything odd?
Does the fisherman have a catch?
Do the sheep not startle?
Where rove the shepherd’s eyes—
Towards a bird? A cloud? Your father?
Was it worth it?
Did you see the world from your winding prison walls
In this same crunched perspective—
Narrow edge by narrow edge,
And barely room for beasts or man?
Is it accident that safe and homey shores appear so small,
And skies and seas so vast?
Was it cold? Was it bracing, thrilling, energizing,
To fly among the clouds—
Crystal breaths of ice, storehouses of rain—
Where gods and birds and Pegasus may tread?
Were you drunk with joy to fly so high,
After the claustrophobic horror
Of the half-man monster’s maze?
Why lies the sun so low?
They say you flew too far,
The air too hot,
Your wings clipped by Helios’ flames.
Is it hubris, then, to reach for the horizon?
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