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Lost Embassy |
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| The cost? Every wave a stone, each feather enameling, and the husk of a boy, gold skin, detached by clockwork from the sky, again the dizzying descent in miniature--the other in the panorama keeps his wings. An Italian master framed the view one duke coveted, for which one poisoned, tiny theater of gold, gear and gem. A turn --birds wheel, the boy falls in the lapis water. It can do nothing to receive him but sparkle, unmoved as the man. And what could he do, brain take in immediately, or even eye handle? Maybe the formula that worth will remain when wax is gone; it made such cunning possible, betrayed the value in the tragic scene. |
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| The rich toy has no start, no end: by lapse or intent, goes either direction. From far above, on the Acropolis (again the man does not move, the device has hidden his wings), Talos falls, perhaps to become a partridge, and is lost to view. No Athenians come. What is known, we supply: disgrace and public furor, detractions of jealous rage, the flight--all which, like clockwork, must ensue. Here he has intended the death of the nephew. But since he has raised no hand, what is static must be offset by material; building, sky and sea view receive their depth from luxury of means, an Attic transparency lent to these fatal rendezvous; never public displays, but the personally emphatic. |
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| And then the craftsman's, here a speck in the distance
where sea's arc meets his freedom. If made so, last: he is disappearing into the clockwork; like the past, the view itself, being bent to a greater circumference. The wings are extended, wider than his own height. Having seen all, will he somehow go untouched, merely go on? Is he fixing the spot, water stretched to a noon-jewel of unfathomed rate? The chiseled wave-caps do not budge, show a trace of the body. It is, after all, his burden to escape, years, punishment, himself: really a commerce in which kin disappear, and only value and shape can be held; the circles will widen, not be effaced for others, what some kill, what some die to keep. |
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