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Nonsense is only another language.

Penelope Fitzgerald


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🦋 Poem and Image

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

William Carlos Williams

posted morning of Saturday, January 14th, 2012
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Hm: and I STR Ferlinghetti may also have referenced this image. Trying to remember where...

posted morning of January 14th, 2012 by Jeremy

Aha! from CityLights.com:

"HISTORY OF THE AIRPLANE"
And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented
something that could make peace on earth
(if the wrong brothers didn't get hold of it)
when their wonderful flying machine took off at Kitty Hawk
into the kingdom of birds but the parliament of birds was freaked out
by this man-made bird and fled to heaven

And then the famous Spirit of Saint Louis took off eastward and
flew across the Big Pond with Lindy at the controls in his leather
helmet and goggles hoping to sight the doves of peace but he did not
Even though he circled Versailles

And then the famous Yankee Clipper took off in the opposite
direction and flew across the terrific Pacific but the pacific doves
were frighted by this strange amphibious bird and hid in the orient sky

And then the famous Flying Fortress took off bristling with guns
and testosterone to make the world safe for peace and capitalism
but the birds of peace were nowhere to be found before or after Hiroshima

And so then clever men built bigger and faster flying machines and
these great man-made birds with jet plumage flew higher than any
real birds and seemed about to fly into the sun and melt their wings
and like Icarus crash to earth

And the Wright brothers were long forgotten in the high-flying
bombers that now began to visit their blessings on various Third
Worlds all the while claiming they were searching for doves of
peace

And they kept flying and flying until they flew right into the 21st
century and then one fine day a Third World struck back and
stormed the great planes and flew them straight into the beating
heart of Skyscraper America where there were no aviaries and no
parliaments of doves and in a blinding flash America became a part
of the scorched earth of the world

And a wind of ashes blows across the land
And for one long moment in eternity
There is chaos and despair

And buried loves and voices
Cries and whispers
Fill the air
Everywhere

posted morning of January 14th, 2012 by Jeremy

It was also referenced in “Musée de Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden.

Quoted here:
http://timesflowstemmed.com/2009/09/06/critical-writing/

posted morning of January 15th, 2012 by Rise

Ooh nice, I had forgotten about that. Thanks! About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters...

posted morning of January 15th, 2012 by Jeremy

...And now it is seeming to my weak memory like Ferlinghetti may actually have referenced that poem of Auden's somewhere...

posted morning of January 15th, 2012 by Jeremy

...No, looks like I am thinking of "In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see..."

posted morning of January 15th, 2012 by Jeremy

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