Icarus

The changing sea waves break on Albion’s agéd bounds
And surge and foam in swells of misty glaze
And sigh, like dreamy whispers of Poseidon’s ghost,
Recalling to these shores the feet of ancient man,
Gone, like shadows into darkling night
Or waves that roar until they fade into the sand.

I dreamed that I could soar above the coursing sea
And gaze upon the wrinkling, rolling surf.
The rising sun was at my flank and every turn
And every breach of every curlicue below
Stretched out a hand and caught a different tone of light
And like a molten rainbow mixing on a screen,
When rosy cheeked Aurora smiled her sweet farewell
Apollo took the reins and turned the sea to gold
And then to solvent zircon as the cloudless sky,
And I, unwary of the frailty of flight
Forgot myself and reached too high. Thereby
My waxen wings were rent and so I fell away.

I did not wake upon my weary bed that day
But on the sandy shore beneath the clouds
And every bone and every recess of my soul
Declared that here upon this slender strand was life,
To live and dream between the water and the sky
And breathe the air that flows from foreign lands,
As ancient man whose footprints faded in the sand
Between the world, the infinite and the abyss.