My brother Sisyphus
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />
My brother Sisyphus,
Cursed by, admired by gods,
He was chums of a sort
Eventually
With the damn boulder;
Like I am with you,
My damn boulder.
I have asked the ants,
Small industrious friends,
To lend me their industry to clear –
Over some no doubt considerable
Portion of eternity which will
Not pause –
To clear a small plateau that
Some aeon, my belovèd friend,
We might finally rest a bit
At the summit of the mountain
And take in the view.
This always rolling obdurately
Back down the mountain,
Back down the mountain,
Back down the mountain,
Is, frankly, mon cher,
A test already passed,
Already passed.
However, until the ants
Grain by grain,
Their own sisyphusean contribution,
Clear this patch for us,
I will lower my shoulder
To the boulder
And stagger it up the damn mountain
Again.
Eternity is very long,
So me and the ants have time
For this act of doggèd devotion.
Eternity is very long:
In the ancient aboriginal myth,
Time is a rock a mile long
And a mile high;
A tiny bright yellowbird
Sharpens its tiny beak on this rock
Once every hundred years.
When thus this rock is worn away,
One moment in eternity
Will have passed.
Eternity is very long:
I will love you
All that time,
All that time,
All that time,
Waiting for the ants
To clear near the summit
A ledge big enough to prop
The damn boulder
Of your rightfully bottomless
Distrust and pain and disdain
From beginning
All
The
Way
At
The
Bottom
Yet
Again.
…………….<^>……………..
………….<^>……………..
If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of rage for irony, rage for peace material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com
………….<^>……………..
It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.
………….….<^>……………..
Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.
copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved
Please send pogblog’s link to friends:
4 Water . Muluc . The River . East tzol 69 08.09.05 tues
ffsb 263§8783§24d8h36m59sikhoudvanu
..
..
the pro-irony world begins today with you
………….<^>……………..
At high noon, I stop.
Then the sun rolls down the slope…
At dawn we start again.
nico de mus
Mr. Pogblog,
thanks for the change of pace. In high school French, they used to tell us that Camus's version of the Sissyphus myth was that it was the trying that mattered and defined the guy.
My French teacher died on a beach in Marseilles between my sophomere and junior (they called it 4th and 5th form) years in the middle of the summer. One teacher there hinted that the French teacher might have been killed working as so,e sort of covert operative to thrwart a drug deal. As an adult, I've wondered if the teacher was killed in a misunderstanding about gay sex. I've never known anything for sure.
Each year he would come to school and try to teach us French. He was a very positive guy, loved to make jokes, etc. this week a French family moved into the neighbor's house on one of those international house share things. They came by and for some reason I was too nervous to even try to speak French with them.
I still believe my French teacher was a good guy. It doesn't really matter to me that the giant pierre rolled down and kept my tongue from speaking French again. I do understand it though.
Third test post – the other two never did show –
I must be invisible.
Dogen, Founder of Soto Zen, lived from 1200 -1253 AD.
Great Book: Enlightenment Unfolds, Edtied by Kazuaki Tanahashi
BT
Icarus & Phaeton so loved the sun that they lost their hearts for it — not for the cool cool moon, but for the savage core only tamed by leaves.
I wish we had sun and moon and rivers worship, if worship we must, again, so we could end the megalomaniacal madness of cursed Monotheism.
beaucoup thanks for the 'ku.
I'm sure nic can elucidate, but if the Dogen Founder of Soto Zen had been born “BC” rather than “AD,” wouldn't he have died at minus 53 years old and wouldn't that have been more, well, zen?
What *is* Soto Zen exactly, or inexactly?
ps. How irritating is it that the extraordinarily boring xtian calendar dominates and names our frolicsome passage of time? That's why I use the niftier Mayan Energy Patterns Calendar so much.
Today being 5 Dog . Oc . Wolf. North . tzolkin 70 08.10.05 wed
pogblog
I do not sit cross-leggedly (an impossible feat at my age) and do not practise Zen. I am zany enough without it. But I like haiku which is a form of Japanese poetry. It consists of three lines and 5-7-5 syllables It must describe a moment of time expressed in some enigmatic and condensed form. In its old form (hokku) it had to have nature as it subject. The most famous hokku poet was a chap called Basho who lived in the 17c Japan. His much quoted hokku:
An old pond;
A frog jumps in —
the sound of water.
nicodemus