My cousin always wanted to be a celebrity
Rich in looks, rich in story: the feathers,
The tall, white feathers of a father's love
Shivered into the inked air and over the waters
For millennia, iterating their measures.

Whereas from where I perched on ramparts
Builded and bullwarked by Father Daedelus' hand
The scripture of my fall made scratching noises
After the city-spirit stood me up on bird feet
And dressed me like a tumbleweed or a thistle.

Whirling everywhere above my blushing perditio,
Icarus engendered in aristocrats and empires
Not to mention astronauts and missiles and colonies
Counting down on the inner planets and their moons,
While I rummage in the undergrowth, a no-count.

Most the site of a builder's male rage, my myth,
An eddy of troubled air in muted catacombs,
A phantom disturbance under broken arches,
A boy whose soul-work was never understood,
The sorrow and the terror of the one unloved.