The Fall of Icarus

By Joseba Sarrionandia

Translated from Basque by Amaia Gabantxo

Joseba Sarrionandia’s poem, translated from the Basque, contemplates the problem of suffering and waiting for Icarus to fall.

May 1, 2017

Published in Cardinal Points: Four Basque Poets

Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder titled Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Listen to Joseba Sarrionandia read "The Fall of Icarus" in the original Basque.

If I had to choose a poem it’d be by W. H. Auden,

the one called Musée des Beaux Arts,

which mentions Pieter Brueghel’s The Fall of Icarus,

where Icarus is but a tiny almost invisible figure

falling into the sea. The old masters understood suffering well,

says W. H. Auden,

how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window

or just walking dully along.

Everything turns away, walks away quite leisurely,

oblivious, practically, to the disaster.

The pain of someone’s life almost never touches someone else.

Almost no one cares for the wounds of others.

The English poem references a Flemish painting,

the Flemish painting a Greek myth and

the Greek myth who knows what: I’m by the window waiting

for Icarus to fall.

I’d get a good view from here, as the clouds float northward

soft, docile, without a care in the world.

If he falls, his wings will hit the antennae on the roofs,

there’s danger in those power lines too.

If we were to join in everyone’s suffering

life would be impossible,

but I’m waiting for Icarus and I’m gonna help,

I’ll collect the pieces of his broken wings,

and give him shelter, when he falls the way I fell,

like a chicken.