no chapter name
Mrs Sisyphus stands alone in darkness and launches a tirade at the mythic figure of Sisyphus, who she derides as “the jerk” pushing a massive stone up a hill. She describes the stone as “nearer the size of a kirk,” notes how his labor once merely irritated her but now “incenses” both of them, and muses that she could stab him with a dirk. She scoffs at his “perk” rhetoric, dismissing it as meaningless when there’s no time for simple pleasures like opening a cork or walking in the park. She ridicules the spectators who flock to watch, calling the whole spectacle “old bollocks” and likening his futile effort to “barking at the moon.” She compares her own solitary anguish to that of “Noah’s wife” hammering at the Ark and to “Frau Johann Sebastian Bach,” noting that her voice has become a “squawk” and her smile a “twisted smirk,” while Sisyphus continues his relentless work on the hill.