Failing and Flying
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.
I love this poem. It's beautiful and terrifying, bleak and yet, ultimately optimistic. Every time I read it the voice I hear is a man's. I discovered Gilbert's poem over a year ago and I've read and reread it countless times. I've yet to ferret all its secrets, but under the pain, and despite the loss, or perhaps because of it, there is tenderness and love still lingers. Icarus fell, yes, but the important detail of his story is that he flew.
There is a fine line between flying and falling, (and failing),until you hit the ground. When I was a child, I was convinced I could fly. I was quickly disabused of this when I leaped off the couch and impaled myself on the family room metal magazine rack.I still have flying dreams occasionally. The last flying dream I remember, I woke up laughing.
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