Gilgamesh Read online

  Their voices gave the confidence his friend

  Had failed to give; some even said

  Enkidu’s wisdom was a sign of cowardice.

  You see, my friend, laughed Gilgamesh,

  The wise of Uruk have outnumbered you.

  Amidst the speeches in the hall

  That called upon the gods for their protection,

  Gilgamesh saw in his friend that pain

  He had seen before and asked him what it was

  That troubled him.

  Enkidu could not speak. He held his tears

  Back. Barely audibly he said:

  It is a road which you have never traveled.

  The armorers brought to Gilgamesh his weapons

  And put them in his hand. He took his quiver,

  Bow and ax, and two-edged sword,

  And they began to march.

  The Elders gave their austere blessing

  And the people shouted: Let Enkidu lead,

  Don’t trust your strength, he knows the forests,

  The one who goes ahead will save his friend.

  May Shamash bring you victory.

  Enkidu was resolved to lead his friend

  Who was determined but did not know the way!

  Now Gilgamesh was certain with his friend

  Beside him. They went to Ninsun, his mother,

  Who would advise them how to guard their steps.

  Her words still filled his mind

  As they started their journey,

  Just as a mother’s voice is heard

  Sometimes in a man’s mind

  Long past childhood

  Calling his name, calling him from sleep

  Or from some pleasureful moment

  On a foreign street

  When every trace of origin seems left

  And one has almost passed into a land

  That promises a vision or the secret

  Of one’s life, when one feels almost god enough

  To be free of voices, her voice

  Calls out like a voice from childhood,

  Reminding him he once tossed in dreams.

  He still could smell the incense she had burned

  To Shamash, saying: Why did you give my son

  A restless heart, and now you touch him

  With this passion to destroy Humbaba,

  And you send him on a journey to a battle

  He may never understand, to a door

  He cannot open. You inspire him to end

  The evil of the world which you abhor

  And yet he is a man for all his power

  And cannot do your work. You must protect

  My son from danger.

  She had put out the incense

  And called Enkidu to her side, and said:

  You are not my son but I adopt you

  And call upon the same protection now

  For you I called upon for Gilgamesh.

  She placed a charm around his neck, and said:

  O let Enkidu now protect his friend.

  These words still filled their minds

  As the two friends continued on their way.

  After three days they reached the edge

  Of the forest where Humbaba’s watchman stood.

  Suddenly it was Gilgamesh who was afraid,

  Enkidu who reminded him to be fearless.

  The watchman sounded his warning to Humbaba.

  The two friends moved slowly toward the forest gate.

  When Enkidu touched the gate his hand felt numb,

  He could not move his fingers or his wrist,

  His face turned pale like someone’s witnessing

  a death,

  He tried to ask his friend for help

  Whom he had just encouraged to move on,

  But he could only stutter and hold out

  His paralyzed hand.

  It will pass, said Gilgamesh.

  Would you want to stay behind because of that?

  We must go down into the forest together.

  Forget your fear of death. I will go before you

  And protect you. Enkidu followed close behind

  So filled with fear he could not think or speak.

  Soon they reached the high cedars.

  They stood in awe at the foot

  Of the green mountain. Pleasure

  Seemed to grow from fear for Gilgamesh.

  As when one comes upon a path in woods

  Unvisited by men, one is drawn near

  The lost and undiscovered in himself;

  He was revitalized by danger.

  They knew it was the path Humbaba made.

  Some called the forest “Hell,” and others “Paradise”;

  What difference does it make? said Gilgamesh.

  But night was falling quickly

  And they had no time to call it names,

  Except perhaps “The Dark,”

  Before they found a place at the edge of the forest

  To serve as shelter for their sleep.

  It was a restless night for both. One snatched

  At sleep and sprang awake from dreams. The other

  Could not rest because of pain that spread

  Throughout his side. Enkidu was alone

  With sights he saw brought on by pain

  And fear, as one in deep despair

  May lie beside his love who sleeps

  And seems so unafraid, absorbing in himself the phantoms

  That she cannot see—phantoms diminished for one

  When two can see and stay awake to talk of them

  And search out a solution to despair,

  Or lie together in each other’s arms,

  Or weep and in exhaustion from their tears

  Perhaps find laughter for their fears.

  But alone and awake the size and nature

  Of the creatures in his mind grow monstrous,

  Beyond resemblance to the creatures he had known

  Before the prostitute had come into his life.

  He cried aloud for them to stop appearing over him

  Emerging from behind the trees with phosphorescent eyes

  Brought on by rain. He could not hear his voice

  But knew he screamed and could not move his arms

  But thought they tried to move

  As if a heavy weight he could not raise

  Or wriggle out from underneath

  Had settled on his chest,

  Like a turtle trapped beneath a fallen branch,

  Each effort only added to paralysis.

  He could not make his friend, his one companion, hear.

  Gilgamesh awoke but could not hear

  His friend in agony, he still was captive to his dreams

  Which he would tell aloud to exorcise:

  I saw us standing in a mountain gorge,

  A rockslide fell on us, we seemed no more

  Than insects under it. And then

  A solitary graceful man appeared

  And pulled me out from under the mountain.

  He gave me water and I felt released.

  Tomorrow you will be victorious,

  Enkidu said, to whom the dream brought chills

  (For only one of them, he knew, would be released)

  Which Gilgamesh could not perceive in the darkness

  For he went back to sleep without responding

  To his friend’s interpretation of his dream.

  Did you call me? Gilgamesh sat up again.

  Why did I wake again? I thought you touched me.

  Why am I afraid? I felt my limbs grow numb

  As if some god passed over us drawing out our life.

  I had another dream:

  This time the heavens were alive with fire, but soon

  The clouds began to thicken, death rained down on us,

  The lightning flashes stopped, and everything

  Which rained down turned to ashes.

  What does this mean, Enkidu?

  That
you will be victorious against Humbaba,

  Enkidu said, or someone said through him

  Because he could not hear his voice

  Or move his limbs although he thought he spoke,

  And soon he saw his friend asleep beside him.

  At dawn Gilgamesh raised his ax

  And struck at the great cedar.

  When Humbaba heard the sound of falling trees,

  He hurried down the path that they had seen

  But only he had traveled. Gilgamesh felt weak

  At the sound of Humbaba’s footsteps and called to Shamash

  Saying, I have followed you in the way decreed;

  Why am I abandoned now? Suddenly the winds

  Sprang up. They saw the great head of Humbaba

  Like a water buffalo’s bellowing down the path,

  His huge and clumsy legs, his flailing arms

  Thrashing at phantoms in his precious trees.

  His single stroke could cut a cedar down

  And leave no mark on him. His shoulders,

  Like a porter’s under building stones,

  Were permanently bent by what he bore;

  He was the slave who did the work for gods

  But whom the gods would never notice.

  Monstrous in his contortion, he aroused

  The two almost to pity.

  But pity was the thing that might have killed.

  It made them pause just long enough to show

  How pitiless he was to them. Gilgamesh in horror saw

  Him strike the back of Enkidu and beat him to the ground

  Until he thought his friend was crushed to death.

  He stood still watching as the monster leaned to make

  His final strike against his friend, unable

  To move to help him, and then Enkidu slid

  Along the ground like a ram making its final lunge

  On wounded knees. Humbaba fell and seemed

  To crack the ground itself in two, and Gilgamesh,

  As if this fall had snapped him from his daze,

  Returned to life

  And stood over Humbaba with his ax

  Raised high above his head watching the monster plead

  In strangled sobs and desperate appeals

  The way the sea contorts under a violent squall.

  I’ll serve you as I served the gods, Humbaba said;

  I’ll build you houses from their sacred trees.

  Enkidu feared his friend was weakening

  And called out: Gilgamesh! Don’t trust him!

  As if there were some hunger in himself

  That Gilgamesh was feeling

  That turned him momentarily to yearn

  For someone who would serve, he paused;

  And then he raised his ax up higher

  And swung it in a perfect arc

  Into Humbaba’s neck. He reached out

  To touch the wounded shoulder of his friend,

  And late that night he reached again

  To see if he was yet asleep, but there was only

  Quiet breathing. The stars against the midnight sky

  Were sparkling like mica in a riverbed.

  In the slight breeze

  The head of Humbaba was swinging from a tree.

  In the morning when they had bathed

  And were preparing

  To return to Uruk

  Ishtar came,

  Their city’s patroness,

  Goddess of love

  And fruitfulness

  And war.

  She brought to Gilgamesh

  His royal robes and crown

  And hinted that the gods

  Had grieved Humbaba’s loss.

  Why should you be chosen

  As the one they blame?

  She said in her coyness.

  I might persuade

  My father Anu to relent

  If you marry me.

  That is the way your kingdom

  Will know peace.

  Gilgamesh shook off what were to him

  Unwanted dreams:

  What would I gain by taking you as wife?

  Love, she said, and peace.

  Just as you loved the lion

  And gave him pits to fall in

  And the horse whose back

  You wounded with the whip,

  He shouted back at her.

  Your love brings only war!

  You are an old fat whore,

  That’s all you are,

  Who once was beautiful,

  Perhaps,

  And could deceive

  But who has left in men

  A memory of grief.

  We outgrow our naiveté

  In thinking goddesses

  Return our love.

  I am tired of your promises,

  Tired as Ishullanu,

  Who brought you dates,

  Innocent until you pressed

  His hand against your breasts

  And turned him to a mole

  Who lived beneath

  The surface of your earth,

  Unable to dig out to air,

  Feeling in his darkness

  For that same soft touch.

  He subsided in his insults

  And turned away to his friend

  Enkidu.

  She stuttered she was so enraged

  And flew to the protection of her father.

  In his customary calm wise Anu noted that

  Her sins had been declaimed this way before.

  She shook in greater rage and said she had

  No time to listen to reminders from old gods,

  But only to ask him to make for her

  The Bull of Heaven to destroy this man.

  I will send him something

  He would never wish to dream.

  There will be more dead

  Than living on this earth.

  A drought that nothing will relieve.

  He listened while her anger ran its course

  And then reminded her: Men need

  Survival after punishments.

  Have you stored for them enough grain?

  She knew her father’s weakness for details

  And said, I thought of that; they will not starve.

  But a little hunger will replace

  Their arrogance with new desire.

  Then Anu acceded to her wish.

  The Bull of Heaven descended

  To the earth and killed at once

  Three hundred men, and then attacked

  King Gilgamesh.

  Enkidu, to protect his friend,

  Found strength. He lunged from side to side

  Watching for his chance to seize the horns.

  The bull frothed in its rage at this dance

  And suddenly Enkidu seized its tail

  And twisted it around, until the bull

  Stood still, bewildered, out of breath,

  And then Enkidu plunged his sword behind its horns

  Into the nape of the bull’s neck, and it fell dead.

  The goddess stood on Uruk’s walls, and cried aloud:

  Grief to those who have insulted me

  And killed the Bull of Heaven!

  When Enkidu heard Ishtar’s curse

  He tore the right thigh from the bull’s flesh

  And hurled it in her face, and shouted:

  I would tear you just like this

  If I could catch you!

  Then she withdrew among the prostitutes

  And mourned with them the Bull of Heaven’s death.

  That night the wound Enkidu had received

  In his struggle with Humbaba grew worse.

  He tossed with fever and was filled with dreams.

  He woke his friend to tell him what he heard and saw:

  The gods have said that one of us must die

  Because we killed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven.

  Enlil said I must die, for you are two-thirds god

  And should
not die. But Shamash spoke

  For me and called me “innocent”

  They all began to argue, as if that word

  Touched off a universal rage.

  I know that they have chosen me.

  The tears flowed from his eyes.

  My brother, it is the fever only,

  Said Gilgamesh. Enkidu cursed the gate

  Into Humbaba’s forest that had lamed his hand

  And cursed the hunter and the prostitute

  Who had led him from his friends, not sensing

  Gilgamesh’s fear at the thought of his own solitude:

  I can’t imagine being left alone,

  I’m less a man without my friend.

  Gilgamesh did not let himself believe

  The gods had chosen one of them to die.

  The fever reached its height

  And like a madman talking to a wall

  In an asylum Enkidu cursed the gate

  As if it were the person he could blame:

  I would have split you with my ax

  If I had known that you could wound.

  Shamash, who called me “innocent,” I curse

  Your heart for bringing me to suffer this.

  He thought he heard Shamash arguing

  That if the prostitute had never come

  To him he never would have known his friend

  Who sat beside him now trying to find

  The gesture to reverse the gods’

  Decision or relieve

  A close companion’s pain.

  Gilgamesh, though he was king,

  Had never looked at death before.

  Enkidu saw in him a helplessness

  To understand or speak, as if this were

  The thing the other had to learn

  And he to teach. But visions from his sickness

  Made him also helpless as a teacher.

  All he had to give was being weak and rage

  About the kings and elders and the animals

  In the underworld that crowded sleep,

  About the feathers that grew from his arms

  In the house of dust whose occupants

  Sat in the dark devoid of light

  With clay as food, the fluttering of wings