Else Cederborg: "With Sisyfos On Hillsides"

 

With Sisyfos on Hillsides

Never ending hillsides, steep death-traps

she climbs them, one by one, with Sisyfos as her guide

He preaches the importance of setting goals

She is set on her dreams of the end station, her true home

beautiful dreams of that end station lure her on

steeper and steeper hillsides beckon her

seemingly all of them dead ends

still, brave and resilient she climbs on

Should she have a medal for being brave?

That medal is hers no matter what

so are the gongs, measuring her progress in heavy heartbeats

Tainted and lethal instruments, resounding as she climbs

 

© Copyright by Else Cederborg

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Sisyphus (or Sisyphos) is a figure from Greek mythology. He was king of Corinth and became infamous for his general trickery when he twice cheated death. Sisyphus ultimately got his comeuppance when Zeus dealt him the eternal punishment of forever rolling a boulder up a hill in the depths of Hades.

Sisyphus was the founder of the Isthmian Games and grandfather of the hero Bellerophon. Sisyphus remains best remembered as a poignant symbol of the folly of those who seek to trifle with the natural order of things and avoid humanity's sad but inescapable lot of mortality. The adjective 'Sisyphean' denotes a task which can never be completed.

Sisyphus Cheats Death

In Greek mythology, the story of Sisyphus has multiple and often contradictory versions with embellishments added over time so that the only point of certainty is his terrible punishment. He was the son of Aeolus, described by Homer as a human who rules the winds. Sisyphus is credited with being the founder and first king of Corinth. He gained infamy for his trickery and wicked intelligence, but his greatest feat was to cheat death and Hades himself, not once but twice, thus living up to Homer's description of him as "the most cunning of men" (Iliad, 6:153). In the first episode the king, after dying and descending into Hades, audaciously managed to capture Thanatos, the personification of Death, and chain him up so that no humans died thereafter. Only the intervention of Ares resolved the crisis, and Death was freed to pursue his natural work.

 

https://www.worldhistory.org/sisyphus/ 

 

Wikipedia