(via jpl dot nasa dot gov)


   "Icarus in November

There is a moment blind with light, split by the hum
  Of something struck and shaken otherwhere,
And if breath's pausing stills the heartbeat and the dumb
  Wet trees clutch every leaf, then on the air
Will blow slow, small, and keen, and faster, greater, higher,
  The hissing whoop of wind through timeless wings
A thuttering drum-beat round a cold immortal fire
  Half-muffling such a mortal cry as brings
  Fear to the lonely soul's imaginings,
A crescent wailing, and the little heart inclined
Hears Icarus, and how the chill gale moans behind.

Who said, O Sun, to Icarus that he must fly
  Or fall who dropped on this green wave at last?
Who fed him bitter aether from the tenuous sky
  Whirled in his winged mind all that is past
And pointed four directions to his stumbling soul?
  Quibbled the whence how where when who and what
Till golden antlers blossomed and the Tree was whole
  And Dian poised, and Icarus forgot
  What Icarus had been, and what had not,
And searching lost the hope that Icarus designed
And seeing, never saw that Icarus was blind?

O Iarus is fallen, alabaster foam
  Hangs stilly, still, Icare est chut ici,
White tangent to the green wave's arc he's shotten home
  Man-bird, sky-arrow to the unriddling sea,
Who was so questing, still unsated, lost to act,
  Quartered the zig-zag sky for beauty's use,
Swooped, soared, sailed, wheeled and turned and sudden stooped on fact
  Or use's beauty or the keen mind's loose
  Hot ions streaming in a fluent sluice,
Heedless that Icarus must fall against the wind
Echoing, ever falling in the hollow mind.

Sun of my night, lamp of my not uncertain void,
  Here Icarus is fallen, here he lies.
O fallen Icarus, whose fleshly eyes alloyed
  The fire and solar gold and still are eyes
Give me some manner bacck the brain, the hardiness--
  If Icarus is fallen once he flew.
Hard-taloned on the sunward wrist he scorned the jess
  Pressed on his quarry in aethereal blue.
  Icare est chut ici, and still he knew
Less where the heron went than what he hoped to find
And more the cloven hoof-print than the frightened hind."

--Al*c B St*v*nson, South*rn Po*ts (1936)



Th* Riddl* and th* Knight.


"One wonders if it will take the fall of the American Empire to uncover the full extent of Washington's war crimes."


"Stray melodies of dim remembered runes" --McKay