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Daedalus was the creator of the Labyrinth for the horrible Minotaur in Crete. He also showed Ariadne how to tell Theseus to escape the maze. Upon hearing of the escape of the Athenians, King Minos threw a fit and trapped Daedalus and his son Icarus in the Labyrinth, from which there was no way to escape from...or so he thought. Daedalus was a bright fellow, and figured out how to make wings from wax and feathers (he must have known the Professor on Giligan's Island.) He put these on himself and Icarus and they flew off. Now Daedalus had warned Icarus "Don't fly near the sun, it'll melt the wax and you will fall into the sea." Of course Icarus was too caught up in the sheer wonder that he was flying and he ignored his dad, flew up and up and up...and then, to Daedalus's horror, came crashing down when the sun melted the wax on his feathers. A saddened Daedalus flew on to Sicily, where he was welcomed home by the king.

Minos was even more furious than before. How dare that smart little geek escape me, he likely thought. So he got smart himself and devised a trick. He proclaimed he'd give a load of cash to whoever passed a thread through an intricately spiraled shell. Daedalus met the challenge by having an ant carry the thread, to which Minos proclaimed "Only Daedalus could think of that." And set off to Sicily to get him. But the King of Sicily and King Minos fought, Minos bit the dust, and Daedalus got to live out the rest of his life free.

Folded hands, shut
dusk folded itself to the trains;
overhead the curtains came to shutters,
were skylights into maps
into both hands bends the forehead,
had sorted from the streetlight, once engulfed:
bemoaned sun through the canopy in dust; tempted
the eye to lean at the tall grass. A
speck of dust in the eye.

once in reverie, had one
thought to cross the waves to this moss-draped city,
"northward," he'd said, the bow near its sunken grace.

in vines we have buried the windows, climbing upwards
your statues fell beside the tracks.
In the rattle of these distant sounds was
Icarus, bound to the rail?

They are carving the moon into wax-
now tie the branches in crossing strings.

Mice clammered to this stone floor, the
trees razed through the windows. One
leaf singed through the road, yesterday
cars cut through the bottom of the sky.
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