I : Posedian's Tale
Icarus would't die that spring day
he coo'ed awhile on the moon (also bored)
if you'll forgive some wax, you'll hear him say
softly, "across ekphrasis lines," here, "scalpel-sure,"
an olde' story sung again in cricket's march
surveying, hilly strophe and feet--this land's smart
Below smooth corridors of crytallis
Poseidon, grumbling, "uboats, german's, flotsam"
while wax wings yawn foaming breathe
that feathers down like notes on stone
etched in paper: first ryhme, then memory
the last gasp breath--her sole mystery
"Oh, what a sight!" He shout, "Roar, Poseidon!"
"..my notes--oh, dear, son, what a story I have..."
and summoning forth, the great whale, Kheiron
--to mend imagation a sad song salvse
Poseidon fills lungs, he longing the breath,
lays his story in imagination's depths
"To mend, imagination, there's olde song
define your land, our parlance dissolves."
He wondered who would bear this gift,
"Another child unfit from Zeus' side--
Out Hera'd-Hera--shooed from Olympus?
Or something less pious than infanticide:
Perchance Plath's, cross-cantered Pegesus,
Brooding boys-nag'd-low as Medusus?
But who can answer falls from heaven
When there's purer stone--your back
...each day you buffet, "your fair fortune
while Caliban coils a wooden rack....
yes, darkness levies to current height
but never quarries beyond Twain's height."
Icarus' reply:
The land, when viewed from such places
yields truth in Whitman's fields--glowing...