Fiama Hasse Pais Brandao
The Decade of Sisyphus
The tenth time he falls
Sisyphus is filled with joy: the mountain now is elsewhere,
its slopes transparent, even more than the air's.
Penitent, he had watched
the massacre, blood clotting
in the foothills, certain spots like wounds.
And yet the stone he's carrying is volatile.
He has left in his past those who
in a spherical city
remain eternal. Far away, there's an engraving,
the age of war. The stone stops,
the tenth silence marks his
decade, the field now air above the rooted city.
Who will follow Sisyphus, those piles of books,
those slabs of stone?
Translated from the Portugese
by
Alexis Levitin
Simon Perchik
*
This attic has always sided with the bombers
leveled off and at exactly noon
you can hear the all-clear, begin
that slow climb to check for leaks
and though rain is no longer a single thread
there's still a trace, a tiny seam
