The Fall of Icarus

by Bruce Whiteman

Off in a corner in a smoky room, with a
glass half–full in his dexter hand,
Wystan Auden innocently scratches his
cheek with his left, quiet, reflecting
on the loneliness that awaits him post–

scene. You have to hand it to the poets.
Most alone in an unfretting crowd of
party–goers goofy with booze and
gossip, by themselves they’ll
celebrate the old stories as though

they wrote them, shout huzzas into
the rafters, pick a kid out of the early
night sky, watch him fall graceless into
darkness and think it meet. He stayed
up too long and the sun went down.

No one but the poet noticed. The rest,
solipsistic and inebriate, were looking
down like horses, like guys with fruit
to sell from wagons, or vegan snacks,
immersed in their cells and deaf.

The drowned boy was lonely in the
final moments. He saw it coming,
death and howsoever the earth goes on
after the crash. The poet remains
lonely too, whisky in his sinister paw now,

cigarette conducting ineffable
music up and down like a pert bird.
There’s no consolation for anything,
really, for all the enduring crap of life.
It merely seems to happen, and we die.