I seldom mean anything, by
the poetic interlineations
here, but to celebrate the
virility with which phenom-
enally basic passages from
a scholastic past find il-
lumination, eventually ex-
perienced. And I'm content
especially, as forgiveness
arises by this provenance.
The bewildering, intricate maze -
Never got through until Daedalus, out of pity
For infatuated Ariadne,
Guided a prince's blind footsteps
With a payout of thread, past every wrong turn
And every dead end he himself had devised
And constructed.
In which grand design
You too would figure significantly,
Icarus, had sorrow allowed it. Twice
Daedalus tried to model your fall in gold, twice
His hands, the hands of a father, failed him.
Virgil
Aeneid
Book VI
40 - 52
Seamus Heaney
translation
Faber & Faber, 2016©
No comments:
Post a Comment