Gilgamesh

A Verse Narrative

Herbert Mason, Herbert Mason

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9780547526607
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient Poetry
• Index: Literature

National Book Award Finalist: The most widely read and enduring interpretation of this ancient Babylonian epic. One of the oldest and most universal stories known in literature, the epic of Gilgamesh presents the grand, timeless themes of love and death, loss and reparations, within the stirring tale of a hero-king and his doomed friend. A National Book Award finalist, Herbert Mason's retelling is at once a triumph of scholarship, a masterpiece of style, and a labor of love that grew out of the poet's long affinity with the original. "Mr. Mason's version is the one I would recommend to the first-time reader." —Victor Howes, The Christian Science Monitor "Like the Tolkien cycle, this poem will be read with profit and joy for generations to come." —William Alfred, Harvard University

III

Gilgamesh wept bitterly for his friend.

He felt himself now singled out for loss

Apart from everyone else. The word Enkidu

Roamed through every thought

Like a hungry animal through empty lairs

In search of food. The only nourishment

He knew was grief, endless in its hidden source

Yet never ending hunger.

All that is left to one who grieves

Is convalescence. No change of heart or spiritual

Conversion, for the heart has changed

And the soul has been converted

To a thing that sees

How much it costs to lose a friend it loved.

It has grown past conversion to a world

Few enter without tasting loss

In which one spends a long time waiting

For something to move one to proceed.

It is that inner atmosphere that has

An unfamiliar gravity or none at all

Where words are flung out in the air but stay

Motionless without an answer,

Hovering about one’s lips

Or arguing back to haunt

The memory with what one failed to say,

Until one learns acceptance of the silence

Amidst the new debris

Or turns again to grief

As the only source of privacy,

Alone with someone loved.

It could go on for years and years,

And has, for centuries,

For being human holds a special grief

Of privacy within the universe

That yearns and waits to be retouched

By someone who can take away

The memory of death.

Gilgamesh wandered through the desert

Alone as he had never been alone

When he had craved but not known what he craved;

The dryness now was worse than the decay.

The bored know nothing of this agony

Waiting for diversion they have never lost.

Death had taken the direction he had gained.

He was no more a king

But just a man who now had lost his way

Yet had a greater passion to withdraw

Into a deeper isolation. Mad,

Perhaps insane, he tried

To bring Enkidu back to life

To end his bitterness,

His fear of death.

His life became a quest

To find the secret of eternal life

Which he might carry back to give his friend.

He had put on the skins of animals

And thrown himself in the dust, and now

He longed to hear the voice of one

Who still used words as revelations;

He yearned to talk to Utnapishtim,

The one who had survived the flood

And death itself, the one who knew the secret.

Before his loss, when he approached at night

The mountain passes where the lions slept

He raised his eyes to Sin, the moon god, and prayed.

Now he expected help from no one.

He tried to fall asleep despite the sounds

Of movement through the trees, his chest was tight

With needless fear Enkidu would have calmed.

When he arrived at the mountains of Mashu,

Whose peaks reach to the shores of Heaven

And whose roots descend to Hell, he saw

The Scorpion people who guard its gate,

Whose knowledge is awesome, but whose glance is death.

When he saw them, his face turned ashen with dismay,

But he bowed down to them, the only way to shield himself

Against effusions of their gaze.

The Scorpion man then recognized

In Gilgamesh the flesh of gods and told his wife:

This one is two-thirds god, one-third man

And can survive our view, then spoke to him:

Why have you come this route to us?

The way is arduous and long

And no one goes beyond.

I have come to see my father,^*

Utnapishtim,

Who was allowed to go beyond.

I want to ask him about life and death,

To end my loss. My friend has died.

I want to bring him back to life.

The Scorpion interrupted him and laughed,

Being impatient with such tales and fearful of sentiment:

No one is able to explain, no one has gone

Beyond these mountains. There is only death.

There is no light beyond, just darkness

And cold and at daybreak a burning heat.

You will learn nothing that we do not know.

You will only come to grief.

I have been through grief! Gilgamesh screamed.

Even if there will be more of pain,

And heat and cold, I will go on!

Open the gate to the mountains!

All right, go! the Scorpion man said,

As if in anger with a child

Who had not reached the age of reason.

The gate is open! His wife added:

Be careful of the darkness. Gilgamesh saw

His going frightened them. They only seemed secure.

He entered the Road of the Sun

Which was so shrouded in darkness

That he could see ...