Landscape with the Fall of Icarus: Oil on Canvas: Pieter Bruegel: 1520

Abstract

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus:Oil on Canvas: Pieter Bruegel: 1520 Paul Tran (bio) Given that the door had to be opened and closed,the jeans unbuttoned and unzipped, the right hand placed over my mouthwhile the left hand held me, held me there, held me down, I can't helpbut think, again then, then and again, thatsuffering, its human position, isn't entirely random because someone has to decide, at some point, with purposeor not, that they're going to getwhat they want or what they tell themselves they want in order to get what they really wanteven if it means hurting another, even if it means hurting them both,even if they can't discern what they really want or that they're hurting, yet,until the hurt and the want, lackingexplanation, or eluding it, become indiscernible from the rest of their suffering, confused for and eclipsingthat suffering, the way the story of sunlight melting wax wingsis confused for the story of hubris and eclipses the story of the child following the father, as the child was instructed to,from one dungeon to anotherof sky, and given that, given all that followed when I followed my fatherfrom our dungeon to one of mennot unlike my father and me, I could've blamed him [End Page 46] for the him who followed, could've maintained the storythat it was neither sunlight nor hubristhat defeated me but descent while bystanders stood by, and I could've reframedthe defeat as the defect of wings, my descent as my dissent to flight,and though I did, though I did whenever and however to suit my schemes, my shifting schema,I accept, for now, just now, thatin the story it was me, and only me, falling from the sky to the sea, that as I struggled against my endI struggled, too, against the fact, fallingand falling, that the end would end, and as I fell from one blue dungeon to another, I sawas I fell closer and closerto the end, the instant preceding the end when everything could still be changed, in the infinite blue of the waterthe infinite blue of the skyand my face, my father's face and his, looking back. [End Page 47] Paul Tran Paul Tran is the author of the debut poetry collection All the Flowers Kneeling, forthcoming from Penguin Poets in 2022. They are a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. Copyright © 2021 Middlebury College