The old man sat down next to me on the dune. We watched in silence as the waves lapped the shore and I hoped he would not break the spell by talking. Alas, it was not to be.
"It was near here," he sighed, "that I watched my son soar too near to the sun, saw the beeswax dripping from his wings, saw him flailing as he fell ... just as I saw my nephew fall when I hurled him down the cliff in a fit of jealous rage. Perhaps helplessly seeing Icarus die this way was a sort of poetic retribution. I don't know. After all these years, does it even matter?
"But as I say, I watched Icarus spiraling down, down, down. I watched the sea waves rising. I will swear to this day they were rising -- monstrous waves surging up to grab him, to swallow him up in the sea's ravenous, pitiless maw. I cried his name. It was all I could do, even though I knew he couldn't hear me above his own shrieks. And even if I could have reached him, his added weight would have been too much for my wings: we both would have plunged into the wine-dark sea -- we both would die.
"At that time, in that horrible moment, my eyes encompassed everything even though my mind comprehended nothing. I saw in the distance a quaintly garbed plowman cutting a furrow. Closer to the shore was a shepherd who seemed to be studying the sky, but in the opposite direction from my son. Oh, and there was also a fisherman who was also oblivious, or uncaring, to the fatal drama. None of the three gave the least notice to the spectacle above them. Later, in the sleepless nights, I would recall those peasants and somehow, I can't explain how, but somehow their very presence, their common, dull activities, made my Icarus and his whole adventure seen trivial, even absurd." And the old man bowed his head and fell silent.
I waited a respectful interval before replying. "I've heard of a man, perhaps you've heard of him also. His name is something like Pieter Brueghel. A fine man, or so I've been led to believe. It's certainly not my place to speak for him, but what I've heard of him makes me think he might be one to draw a lesson from your tale. Maybe its moral, if it indeed has one, is that the pretentious inevitably gives way to the real, and the high and mighty always seem risibly transitory when confronted by the common and lowly. After all, it is the poor in spirit who possess the Kingdom and the meek who will inherit the earth."
The old man gave no reply, but after several minutes he smiled. Then, without a word, he rose and walked along the shore of the wine-dark sea until he was lost to sight.
