Elegy

Mavis Cosmelly

“When they told Harry Truman that Franklin Roosevelt had died, Truman said he felt
as if the sun and the moon and the stars had fallen from the sky and I guess a lot
of us felt that way yesterday when we saw those television pictures of the shuttle
breaking up and the pieces falling back to earth.”

— Bob Schieffer

As with Ircaus, who dreamed
of escape, of freedom
from the weight of the world,
whose bright wings
lifted him toward the sun,
but who dropped
into the sea and perished,
once more our fragile dreams
exploded into myth,
like the sun, the moon, the stars
falling from the sky.