If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious.
—Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”
In recognition of my life, the gods
provided me, in death,
this mountain,
this stone.
And
forever… we all
get that. But what good
would forever be, without
a mountain,
a stone?
*
Sisyphus, the stone whispers,
are you awake?
All day its weight tears my limbs.
All night it whimpers
in my ear, so that if I dream
I dream
of the sorrows of stones.
No, I say. I’m sleeping.
*
The first time I scaled the mountain,
those early years
here in the dark,
this body-breaking stone
was merely a pebble.
In your sandal, right now,
you surely have
more or less the same one.
*
There weren’t always crowds. For a time
no one came at all…
until one day
some of the damned
stopped,
in whatever shape the gods gave
their penance,
to watch what they assumed
was the shape of mine.
*
True: I angered the gods.
And I’ve learned
what mortals say, my toil
pointless, a fate to avoid…
But to be a god’s concern
is to be a god.
Your fates
are just like mine—but mine
I earned.
*
When I despair, the stone reminds me
how once this path
was flat, a blackened plain…
how someone
spent their own sad forever
to build, rock on rock,
this peak…
That
was me, I remind the stone.
*
Not much here
gives comfort. Still, some days
it helps to remember
how time grinds mountains to stone,
stone to sand to…
Too bad,
the stone reminds me,
you don’t have time.
Forever, sure. But not time.
*
We manage, again, the summit.
Almost.
The view is what it is.
Dim forests, dimmer clouds.
Below us somewhere, crowds
of the suffering.
How unlike them
we are, the stone says
and falls.
