t h e   f a l l   o f   i c a r u s

About suffering they were never wrong,/ The Old Masters; how well, they understood/ Its human position; how it takes place/ While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;/ How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting/ For the miraculous birth, there always must be/ Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating/ On a pond at the edge of the wood:/ They never forgot/ That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course/ Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot/ Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse/ Scratches its innocent behind on a tree./ In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may/ Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,/ But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone/ As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green/ Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen/ Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on
W. H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts, 1940

After the long hot summer, the rains came. It rained like it could only rain in the tropics ~ big, fat drops the size of saucers that sizzled when they hit the pavement, just as Plath had imagined they would in Brazil.

But this wasn’t Brazil, and Plath was already dead.

And so, on that first day of rain, I turned from the window, opened the door, and walked out. Into the sheets of rain, into the wet earth, and I knew then that I never would walk back again.

Walked on, down the street, past yellowed windows and grime seeping slowly. Things were beginning to blur now; it was all a rush. It seemed like I had been moving towards this day my entire life.

They had wanted to talk, and I had laughed in their faces. I had seen it all, again and again, until it made me nauseous. The whole office had wanted to help, but they didn’t understand, and never would.

And so on I went, suddenly fascinated with how my feet moved over the slush, and in it. Left. Right. Left. Right. Forward. Left behind. There were a thousand variables brought into play, and I could not take my eyes off them.

They were all that mattered. What else? At least they got my mind off people. People irritated me. Emotional clutter. I pitied them, almost.

People were asses. They all lived and romanced and loved and hated and murdered in this tragedy of a city. One’s entire life, so limited. I could bundle it into a ball, and roll it towards an overwhelming question, and it would be at a loss for words.

The feet were slowing down now, at least the left one was. Struggled with it, and forced it into submission. I knew I wouldn’t last long.

For you do know that madness isn’t murdering a couple of people, or being tortured in your cell. It is living and working in the same office for thirty years, in a desperate attempt to save for those 600 square feet for the wife and kids. It is being in that rut, in this heat and dust and sweat and efforts in futility.

And so I go on, struggling with the feet. I do not think they will listen to me. Who knows? Do you?

< Previous     Next >



© 2001–2008 p i n a k i