By Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
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A blessed Imbolc/Candlemas/Feast of Brigid/Groundhog Day! We got a bit of snow in the morning of the first day of February, but it wasn't enough to delay school. I spent my morning trying to finish a review of Deep Space Nine's third season finale, "The Adversary", while Paul worked from home so that after lunch we could go pick up Daniel in College Park since he wants to come to my friend's Super Bowl party on Sunday. Adam went for a bike ride after school and found out that three of his photos won honors in the Scholastic arts competition, including one top prize.
We had dinner with my parents, came home to watch Nikita, then Adam went to bed and the rest of us watched this week's two episodes of Shakespeare Uncovered, Derek Jacobi on Richard II and Jeremy Irons on the three Henry plays that follow. I have had a hard time taking Jacobi seriously since I found out that he was an Oxfordian, which he went on about in his segment (I wanted him to show up again when Irons was pointing out that large segments of Henry V were plagiarized from Holinshed so Jacobi could explain why the great and powerful Oxford did THAT). Some pics of flowers from the US Botanic Garden last month:
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