Poems from The Journey to Kailash XI
Mike Allen / April 28th, 2011 / 2 Comments »
Sisyphus Walks
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Sisyphus lifts the thighbone of a god Above his head (a bone thick and long as A felled tree) and begins his trudge Across the hard-packed dust. Spills of silver fluid blanket uneven stone, Not pooling in hollows but spreading in Thin film atop the ground, slick sheets Draped over surface, that part rather than Splash as Sisyphus steps through. Pipes, metal, ceramic, cracked, of Unpredictable diameter rise from valley floor As breathing tubes from water; some protrude Through mounds of bone. Ragged Openings echo voices from some Place deep below, their syllables Forming no language Sisyphus knows. Sheer black rock bluffs rise from the plain, Jagged walls carving empty ocean basin Into this bewildering maze where Sisyphus Is never lost as he walks, titan bone Balanced over head, around and over other Cyclopean remains, charred pelvises or ribs, A jaw bone that rocks itself, still eager to speak, Fingers long as Sisyphus’ legs crooking Come Hither. Sisyphus has seen all before And ignores. From these bleak walls towers rise, not built So much as grown, or eroded, stalagmites Stabbing into oilslick sky. At intervals, Massed clusters rise as castles, their rough Battlements riddled with windows, round portholes Peppered at random, even bored into unsculpted Bluffs; sometimes faces peer from them, Bestial visages, or smooth masks, or things Much more indistinct. They never speak, and in A blink have gone. On them, Sisyphus Wastes no wonder. Shadows in the maze constantly change, Thrown by whatever arch the spines of the sun Choose to sweep as it twists and squirms Cross-sky, a glowing wyrm whose radiance Brings no heat, its soft progress sometimes Thwarted by coils of sickly rainbow cloud, Sometimes whipped along in eddies Of a firmament where colors never blend. Like Sisyphus the sun never settles or sets, Merely strains against confinement, thrashing To all compass points and back again. Sisyphus remembers a moon, complex Mobile of cold beauty, intricate pieces that Spun and interwove; but like the night, It’s banished; he can’t remember when He last saw it shimmer above. Pushing against the grain of a wind That sucks and blows as breath, Sisyphus arrives at last at neat fields Carved at random by castle shadows. This is his destination, though no place of rest. Among the ordered rows of bone He walks, until he comes to a tract where Parts of a behemoth skeleton Lie ceremonially on the ground, Arranged as one should be; Shoulders above ribs, feet below knees; Gingerly, he lowers thighbone into place. No arms yet, no hands, no head. Sisyphus walks away, with countless More bones to search among To find and collect the right ones. Once this god is together again, Perhaps it will tell him why it placed Him here, why night never comes, Whether Sisyphus has at last Repaid his long-forgotten debt. And if it has no such to say, Then he will begin again With another one. |
