A Poem About Sisyphus

Image from blogs.getty.edu / Thinking about Sisyphus

This is my original poem completed on April 22, 2021

Knowing

Sisyphus knows that the rock
will roll down his mountain again — it
is inescapable, it is his punishment
for being sly, for laughing
at the cruelties of the gods, for
daring to chain death to
Hades’ door.

Sisyphus knows the gods
see his vain and hopeless
labor: the rock pushed up, up, up
from the lower world — up, up, up
— and the downward roll
always comes.

Yes, he knows. But he lives
for that one split second at the top
— looking out at the flat plain below,

and the rock
the rock
the rock
rolling.

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