He lifts himself from bed without remark to meet the worn, repeated tasks at hand. No record marks the ground on which he strains— no witness, no laurel, no acclaim. His strength lies not in storied deed but labor plain: a hearth kept warm, a family fed, life sustained. No tale is told, no stone inscribed or raised— the ordinary man, in toil, is born.
The meaning lies in being, not in praise; in beauty glimpsed, not possessed though understood. No crowns he needs nor feast days held for him; his worth is in the craft, the nail, the wood. He does not seek to master, nor to flee, but walks the field, or mends a gate, or tends a tree. In passing light, in gesture undesigned, a truth is touched, not grasped, yet binds.
The purpose is in others—in shared bread, the coat repaired, the cup placed in the hand; in love soft-spoken, faithful in its giving, not in the vow proclaimed, but in the deed. His days are stitched with care that shows no seam, his name unsung, his work by others’ need. Though he may pass unnamed when he is gone, he will have sown the path that others walk upon.
“Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.” (“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”) —Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942)
But perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps the truth is simpler: When the stone is gone, the man remains.
Sisyphus Undone; or, It Was Tuesday
by Donald S. Yarab
He rose, as ever, with the morning’s breath, the hill still steep, the silence oddly wide. No stone to greet him with its weight or will— no groan of earth, no task to be defied.
The gods were gone. Their laughter had grown faint, or else the air refused to carry sound. The path he wore through centuries lay bare, a scar now healing into senseless ground.
He searched for signs: a crack, a trace, a mark, but found no proof that toil had ever been. His hands, once strong with strain, now idle hung, still shaped by burdens long dissolved within.
He sat. The dust rose lightly at his knee. A lark began to sing, then flew away. The sky, untroubled, held no word for him. The world had turned. It was another day.
What is the self when labor fades to wind? What is the myth once struggle slips its chain? He breathed. No answer stirred the lucid air. The hill was whole. The man was left, and plain.
It was raining. The crowd— too few to be a crowd—perhaps a gathering, or the assembled, more ghosts than listeners, their coats darkened not just by weather but by the weight of waiting.
He stood on the stump, not of authority, but of loss— the remnant of a tree felled long before, as if the forest had once believed in clearing room for prophecy.
He spoke not of thunder, but of hush. Not of redemption, but of what remained after the soil forgot its seed.
The gathering, if such it was, did not cheer, nor weep. They listened with the rain, as if the water itself were translating his broken cadence into something nearly true.
He spoke not of hope, or loss, of tomorrow, or yesterday, or even today. He named no sins, offered no absolution, held no book but the hush of water sliding down his sleeve.
His voice did not rise. It pooled. Like the rain in the hollow of the stump beneath him. He said only: “You have heard the wind. Now hear the stillness it leaves behind.”
And they did not answer. Not from doubt, but because his words were not questions. They were roots— groping downward through silence, seeking something older than belief.
A dog barked in the distance. A child shifted, not from boredom, but from the weight of understanding too early what it meant to stand still in a world that keeps spinning.
He stepped down, the stump left wet, as if it had wept a little too.
And the assembled, if that is what they were, dispersed—no closer, no farther, but marked.
Some were bewildered. Others thought they were enlightened, but knew not how. Still others could not recall what he had said, only that his voice was comforting, his cadence soothing— not the lullaby of forgetfulness, but the murmur of rain on old wood, reminding them of something they had never quite known.
No creed was offered. No call to return. Yet a few found themselves walking more slowly afterward, listening more intently to trees, to puddles, to silences that did not demand reply.
And the stump remained— neither altar nor monument, but a place where words once settled like mist and did not vanish.
The vague glimmer of a head suspended in space (1891, Lithograph) Odilon Redon (1840–1916)
I Am Undone
I.
It came not with fury, nor with fire. Not a blow, but a breath withheld. A stillness uncoiling in the spine. I did not cry out. I did not fall. I said only—I am undone. And the words were true, though I did not yet know how much they would mean.
II.
The star chart curled into ash. Landmarks dimmed, receded, folded into fog. I had names once— for the road, the self, the longing. They rusted in my mouth. I said again, am I— but the word faltered. Was I I? Was am still? Was undone the end, or only a door swinging inward with no floor?
III.
I wandered, perhaps. Or stood still and the world wandered past. The days no longer linked. Events occurred—but not to me. Faces mouthed shapes I could not hear or remember. I touched a wall that had always been there. It crumbled under my hand. I called it home, or meant to. Or once had. I think.
Un—done—I am—undone am I— I am…am I…?
IV.
And the past… no, the shape before the past— was it mine? Or borrowed from the eyes of others? Their eyes are gone. The mirror does not answer. I meant to say a thing— some thing— a small thing— but the mouth no longer forms what the mind no longer sends.
There is no forward. There is no back. There is no—
(nois)
V. Dissolution
I think I said—I was— no. I had said. Once.
Undone. It was the word. I said it. Before. Or after. I do not—
No shape to the day. No frame to the thought. They come—go— without edge.
The name of the thing was… not there. And the word for that— what was the word? The word is gone. The knowing is not.
“Ponder, O Morpheus, the Night Sky” arose from a meditation on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and the silent mysteries that lie beyond both. Rather than seeking to instruct, this poetic work offers a dialogue — between mortal longing and divine wonder, between question and silence. In addressing Morpheus, the god of dreams, the poem invites not sleep, but contemplation: a shared pondering of the night sky, where the known fades into the unknown, and where even gods may pause in awe before the infinite. It is my hope that this work may serve as a quiet companion for those who have found themselves, at least once, standing beneath the stars, asking questions for which no easy answers are given — and finding, in the asking, a kind of sacred beginning.
Sleep by Jean Bernard Restout (c. 1771). Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 96.5 cm (38 x 51 in). Cleveland Museum of Art. Depicting Morpheus
Ponder, O Morpheus, the Night Sky
“Beyond dreams lies a silence where even gods wonder.”
Prelude: The Summoning of Morpheus
Morpheus, Keeper of the Silent Looms, hear now the summons not of those who seek forgetfulness, nor of those who plead for soft illusions to cradle their weary minds— but of one who, standing alone beneath the immeasurable firmament, dares to bid thee ponder.
Ponder, thou Weaver of Shadows, the night sky: the endless, ink-deep vault where Orion’s belt cinches the waist of darkness, where scattered fires—blue, white, and ancient red— whisper of secrets too vast for mortal tongues.
Not for dreams of idle comfort do I call thee forth, but for contemplation; to set aside for a moment thy ceaseless crafting of mortal visions and lift thine ancient gaze upward, where the silent percussion of dying stars beats out the hidden music of creation.
For if thou, master of phantoms and bringer of luminous memories, shouldst pause to wonder at that boundless mystery, then perhaps the soul of man, frail and flickering though it be, might dare likewise to ask:
Who dreams the dreamers, O Morpheus? Whence come the visions thou bestowest? And what lies beyond the last dream, beyond the last star, beyond the last breath of sleep?
Thus the greater query is born, trembling on the tongue of the sleepless, yearning toward the silence that gathers all speech.
The Greater Query: A Dialogue with Morpheus
Soul: If thou, O Shaper of Phantoms, canst be stilled by wonder, then hear the questions borne upon my waking breath, fragile as they are, yet earnest as the stars are ancient:
Who first whispered the dream into being, before ever thou didst fashion it? From what unseen wellspring do the rivers of vision flow? Are the dreams of men but fractured echoes of a deeper song, or do they weave even now the hidden fabric of worlds yet unborn?
Morpheus (in thought): Dreams are the trembling of the soul against the veil of the infinite. They are not born of my will alone, Seeker, but arise from the deep soil where memory, longing, and the first light entwine. I but give them form; I do not summon them from the abyss. Some dreams, frail though they seem, stitch the very edges of what is to be. Mortals, in dreaming, unknowingly shape the unborn dawn.
Soul: Is it given to us—dust briefly animated, clay granted momentary breath— to pierce that veil? Or must we first unmake ourselves, falling through forgetting, to be remembered by the nameless light?
Morpheus: Beyond all dreams there is a silence older than stars and deeper than death. A silence not of absence, but of fullness, where neither waking nor sleeping holds dominion, and the soul, naked and unafraid, beholds itself as it was before all weaving began.
There the true Dreamer dwells— not I, but He whom none can name, the source of all dreams, the end of all seeking, the unspoken, the unseen.
Soul: And if we seek it, do we not risk all—memory, longing, even self itself?
Morpheus: It is the risk of being lost to be found, the surrender of knowledge to come to knowing. To seek the Silent One is to set sail upon a sea without stars, to abandon the safe shores of image and name, to become at last what thou hast always been: a breath upon the waters of infinity.
Ponder well, O Seeker, for in the seeking, thou thyself becomest the dream, the dreamer, and the silence beyond.
The Blessing of Morpheus: The Sending Forth
Morpheus: Go forth, Child of Earth and Stars, go forth lightly, as one who walks upon waters not yet created. Carry no burden save the yearning that kindled thy question; bind no certainty to thy brow, nor shelter fear within thy breast.
Let dreams fall from thee like withered leaves; let even the constellations become but distant embers, for thou seekest now what neither dream nor waking thought can compass.
Take not with thee the names men have carved into the bones of the world, for names shatter against the face of the nameless. Take not the proud trophies of reason, nor the soft nets of hope, for these will tear upon the thorns of the infinite.
Instead, take this only: a heart made naked in wonder, a mind made silent in awe, and feet made light as wind upon waters unseen.
And know this, O Soul: thou art neither lost nor found in this seeking, for to seek the Silent One is to be gathered even now into His dreaming.
Thus do I, Morpheus, who weaves the veils of sleep, send thee forth beyond all veils, beyond all sleep, beyond the last trembling breath of mortal wonder. Go, and become the question thou hast dared to ask.
Epilogue: The Pondering of Morpheus
And Morpheus stood long in the hush of the night, his ancient hands unclasped, his brow unburdened of dreams.
He lifted his gaze once more to the immeasurable vault, where scattered fires—blue, white, and red— burned against the black breast of infinity.
He pondered— not as god to mortal, nor as master to servant, but as wonder to wonder, breathless before a mystery he too could not wholly grasp.
In the stillness beyond weaving and shaping, he glimpsed, as in the faintest shimmer of distant nebulae, a vastness where even gods must bow their heads, where even dreams dissolve like mist before the morning sun.
And in that silence, older than all his songs, Morpheus smiled— not because he understood, but because he wondered still.
He felt a pang—brief and piercing— a mortal ache for the fleeting fierceness of human wonder, so bright and brief.
And so he pondered, and the night pondered with him, until speech was stilled, and he was lost—and found—within the endless deep.
Northcoast Antiquarian 