The Journal Wk. 20
The Mirror and the Light: Salvage III
‘You are going to live for ever, of course,’ Chapuys says. ‘Always climbing.’
… He thinks of the wings he wears; or so he boasted to Francis Bryan. When the wings of Icarus melted, he fell soundless through the air and into the water; he went in with a whisper, and feathers floated on the surface, on the flat and oily sea. Why do we blame Daedalus for the fall, and only remember his failures? He invented the saw, the hatchet, and the plumbline. He built the Cretan labyrinth.
The Mirror and the Light, 122, 156
Those who fall from the ladder that stretches
From heaven to hell, with all the earth between –
Are they not given eternity
To say, I did such, and should not,
I have done and left undone
And wound my thoughts against my mind,
I have offended God himself;
The pit that gapes beneath me I did make
And in the earth I lie unquiet.
Now, those who climb, they climb steadily
And never dare look down –
Icarus falls past them;
They are blind
Until their hands are full of drifting feathers,
Until the sun, the sea, and all the rising world
Become their own end and immortality.
That same sun which shows the earth unto itself
Burns through flesh and soul alike;
In the lighted mirror Daedalus may watch his face
And unseen, move his mind.
The Journal is a section where I post weekly poems responding to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Here’s last week’s edition:
