Conserve Your Water

Eric Clapton: Every Day I Have the Blues

My students look at me
expectantly.
I explain to them
that the life of art
is a life of endless labor.
Their expressions
hardly change;
they need to know
a little more
about endless labor.
So I tell them
the story of Sisyphus,
how he was doomed
to push a rock up a mountain,
knowing nothing would
come of this effort
but that he would
repeat it indefinitely.
I tell them
there is joy in this,
in the artist’s life,
that one eludes judgment,
and as I speak
I am secretly pushing a rock myself,
slyly pushing it up the steep
face of a mountain.

Why do I lie
to these children?
They aren’t listening,
they aren’t deceived,
their fingers tapping
at the wooden desks—
So I retract the myth;
I tell them it occurs
in hell, and that
the artist lies
because he is obsessed
with attainment,
that he perceives the summit
as that place where
he will live forever,
a place about to be
transformed by his burden:
with every breath,
I am standing
at the top
of the mountain.
Both my hands are free.
And the rock has added
height to the mountain.

--Louise Glück