{ breathe_poetry. }

[delga]

Landscape With the Fall of Icarus
by William Carlos Williams


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

 

Comments

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I saw it on my flist and I had to re-post it. I have an inexplicable Icarus fetish.

[twincy.livejournal.com]

I [heart] breathe_poetry. They were posting Atwood earlier this week!

Peripherally related: a Dutch museum is hosting an exposition right now of a collection of paintings Brueghel did with Rubens, and I want to go see it so bad. Not because I particularly care about either painter, but because the idea of two great painters collaborating, and allegedly arguing about the paintings (like when Rubens painted over half of Brueghel's part of a painting, lolz), I just love the thought of that.

But I digress *spectacularly*

PS. Your new layout = gorgeous.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I know! I was flipping out in a spectacular fashion. (I have an Icarus fetish, though, hence the re-posting of this one.)

Oh, you should totally go! It would be a sight, if nothing else. !!!

pea ess. merci.

[raucousraven.livejournal.com]

One of my favourite poems. I love how it tracks the progress of the eye, so that Icarus is the last thing in the poem, just as he's likely the last thing you find in the picture. Thank you for posting it!