ayoissayo:

“Failing and Flying”

by 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.