La Dispute - Six lyrics

The gods had condemned Sisyphus
To ceaselessly rolling a
Rock to the top of a mountain
Whence the stone would fall back of it's
Own weight they had thought with some
Reason that there is no more dreadful
Punishment than futile and hopeless labor
Nothing is told us about Sisyphus
In the underworld myths
Are made for the imagination
As for this myth
One sees merely the whole effort
Of a body straining
To raise the huge stone, to roll it, and
Push it up a slope a hundred times
Over one sees the face screwed up
The cheek tight against the stone
The wholly human security of
Two earth-clotted hands
At the very end of his long effort
The purpose is achieved then Sisyphus
Watches the stone rush down
In a few moments toward
The lower world whence
He will have to push it up again toward the
Summit he goes back down to the plain
It is during that return, that pause
That Sisyphus interests me a face
That toils so close
To stones is already stone
It'self! I see that
Man going back down with a heavy yet measured
Step toward the torment of which he will
Never know the end that
Hour like a breathing-space
Which returns as surely as his suffering
That is the hour of
Consciousness at each of those moments
When he leaves the heights
And gradually sinks toward the
Lairs of the gods
He is superior to his fate he
Is stronger than his rock
The workman of today works everyday in
His life at the same tasks
And his fate is no less absurd
But it is tragic only at
The rare moments when it becomes conscious
Sisyphus knows the whole extent
Of his wretched condition: it is what
He thinks of during his descent
There is no fate that can
Not be surmounted by scorn
If the descent is thus
Sometimes performed in sorrow
It can also take place in joy when
The images of earth cling too tightly
To memory
It happens that melancholy arises in
Man’s heart: this is
The rock’s victory but crushing truths
Perish from being acknowledged thus
Edipus at the
Outset obeys fate without knowing it
But from the moment he
Knows, his tragedy begins yet
At the same moment
He realizes that the only
Bond linking him to the world is
The cool hand of a
Girl then a tremendous remark rings
Out: "Despite so many ordeals
My advanced age and the nobility of my soul
Make me conclude that all is well"
"I conclude that all is well, " says Edipus
And that remark is sacred it echoes in
The wild and limited universe
Of man it teaches
That all is not, has not been, exhausted
All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein
His fate belongs to him
The rock is still rolling