To listen to an audio recital of the poem, click here
For those unfamiliar with the
myth, Sisyphus was punished for cursing the gods; his sentence, to push a large
boulder to the summit of a tall mountain, from where the gods would then
project it back to the bottom, and he required to clamber down and push it up
again. A perfect analogy for the “absurdity” of the human condition, according
to the French philosopher Albert Camus. My version amends the Greek original to
my own philosophical position, one which refuses to collaborate in its own
victimhood. I am also conscious that the crucial word-play on the word “dam” is
likely to be untranslatable.
In
these days of my dying I have come back to the
mountain, a man bred on sluggish rivers,
taught
to unwind whatever stream and pour it gently,
gratefully, slipping over rocks,
taught
to lie down on soft, dry beds, to tend the
trees and flowers, to know my limits and to
keep
within my boundaries,
taught
to look upwards to the peaks and shield my
eyes against the blinding light of suns, of
gods,
of madmen, who alone could travel there,
taught
to look upwards and admire, even while my back
bent downwards to the long, flat sea,
taught
to obey the flowing of the current, to brace
myself against the cold, to spin only where
the
whirlpool turned me, to cease when I faced
the
overpowering
dam.
And
when I reached the sea, I found a ragged shell,
and opened it, I probed its ache of darkness,
tampering, discarding, modifying,
uncovering
its broken body piece by piece,
and keeping, or not keeping.
I
took the half-made shell and plunged it deep into
the acid of its dissolution, and reformed it,
moulding its darkness with my own bare
hands,
until it was complete.
And
then I held it to the skies, my head turned
upwards to the mountain-tops, the tiny god I
had
created gleaming in my hands, my own pride
gleaming,
as
I raised my head and laughed,
as
I raised my voice and cursed,
as
I raised my idol to the sun
and threw it like a rock into the river.
Oh,
it was ambitious, it was brazen, but I was always
ambitious, I who found the river far too
sluggish, I
who knew that nothing could be safe or
simple that a
man made in defiance of his gods.
But
I had touched the unknown, and touching I had
learned it was not God.
But
I had reached into the darkness, and clutching I
had
learned it was not Hell.
But
I had pierced the invisible, and seeing I had
learned I was not blind.
There
are mysteries, moments of pure magic, there are
revelations, visions in a dream of dissipated
light,
there are heights beyond the mountain-tops,
and
these too I have found, and held,
and formed with my own hands, yet never once
did my feet lift off the earth, never once
did I fail to soar beyond the clouds.
Thus
did I live, and now, in these days of my dying,
I have come back to the mountain, a man bred
on
sluggish rivers, a man prepared to lift the
rock and
hoist it upwards to the peaks, to stand
there, my
head tilted skywards, my eyes
unshielded,
my voice raised to the gods,
as
I curse them
as
I defy them,
as
I lift the rock upon my shoulders, and hurl it,
as
I once hurled an idol I had made
into the paltry river,
into the weak and flimsy,
quickly-broken
dam.
"The Song of Sisyphus" is published in "Welcome To My World, Selected Poems 1973-2013", The Argaman Press. Click here to purchase the book.
The illustration on this page shows "The Punishment of Sisyphus", a detail of a painting on an amphora by the Achelous Painter, late 6th century BC; in the State Collections of Classical Art Munich Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/Art Resource, New York City.
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The Argaman Press
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