Elegy for Sisyphus [Today's News
Poem, February 10, 2012]
in memoriam,
Roger Boisjoly
He rolled boulders off his lawn for hours
every
day until his muscles were chained
to exhaustion, until sleep
stayed precariously
balanced in his grasp instead of
falling
downhill like a punishment for his failure.
"We
were talking to the right people," he said, but
seven
astronauts were dead, their faces replayed
nonstop on news
channels as the shuttle exploded
every time he closed his eyes.
Cancer
finally killed what guilt tried to crush: a good
man
shouldering the weight of his own impotence.
For almost
thirty years he pushed
other engineers to do more, say more, to
swear
on words binding as the Styx, where he now waits
quietly
for the ferryman to row him across, to a field
green as a Florida
summer, with no stones in sight.
"The NASA officials on a
conference call didn't want to hear it. The shuttle program managers
were desperate to prove they could launch reliably. When do you want
me to launch, one of them said, next April? A year later, Boisjoly
suffered from disabling headaches. He moved boulders off his lawn all
day so he'd be exhausted enough to sleep at night. And he huddled in
the corner of a couch, thin and tearful, his arms folded tight, ready
to speak out."
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