Failing and Flying
-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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