Icarus - Poem

Literary Review, Wntr, 2001 by Tony Curtis

   Out of an English summer morning's sky
   drops an Indian who failed in flight
   miles short of heaven. This frozen Icarus
   thrown from the wheel-bay of a 747,
   splashes into a Surrey reservoir,
   cracking the water like a whip.

   This poor man stowed away
   in the Delhi heat, curled
   himself into an oven of rubber and oil,
   and dreamed as he rose in the deafening take-off
   of food and rain and Coca-Cola
   and television where the colour never ends.

   The waitress at the Granada stop
   tapping in two coffees and a Danish
   at the till, for no reason at all,
   looked up, saw a bird, or an engine,
   or a man, and then nothing
   but blue sky again.

Tony Curtis is Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan, where he leads the M. Phil. in Writing. He has published twenty-two books of poetry, criticism, and art commentary. In 1984, he won the UK Poetry Competition and in 1993, The Dylan Thomas Award. He was awarded the Cholmondeley Award by the Society of Authors in 1997. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former chair of the Welsh Academy. His eighth collection of poems, Heaven's Gate, has just been published. He runs the Wales web-site art gallery ww.gallery4wales.com.