Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child
by Laura Cumming
"Words and images. In life as in art we do not always see what is going on at the edges,
or even the foreground, do not notice what seems irrelevant or superfluous to our needs
and theories. Perception is guided by our own priorities. Five hundred years ago,
Brueghel played upon our habits of looking, knowing that we would be a good while
pondering the plowman, the sun, sea, and ship, before we ever got to the shepherd
staring up at the sky and realized that there must be something else going on, finally
spotting the shock of Icarus."
"Written across the top in fountain pen is this declaration: we love you."
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
by William Carlos Williams
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
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