Oil on canvas, 103 × 89 cm. Galerie Ritthaler, Munich.
© Collection Galerie Ritthaler.
“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.
Northcoast Antiquarian 