Daedalus

Minos … promised to reward anyone who could pass a linen thread through [a Triton shell] … Fastening a gossamer thread to an ant, [Daedalus] bored a hole at the point of the shell and lured the ant up the spirals by smearing honey on the edges of the hole. Then he tied the linen thread to the end of the gossamer and drew that through as well…
At Aphrodite's shrine on Mount Eryx a golden honeycomb was displayed, said to have been a votive offering presented by Daedalus when he fled to Sicily.
—Robert Graves
Mythic artefacts, the wrought gold
of centuries, gathered to my name.
I had but one pair of eyes through which
the jewelled light shone, one pair of hands
to serve the intricacy of vision.
Between the voids of uncreation,
death, one shapes a frail offering —
much as this ant threads its unseen
path inside the spiral shell of art.
My labyrinth, honeycomb, survive only
in story — like the child I made, they have
melted into air, dissolved into the sea,
under that eye which transfigures,
whose gaze we can never return.