More Pieces of Gilgamesh

Here's the last installment of my translations from Gilgamesh, the world's oldest story. It's a great story about friendship, violence, and magic, but I confess I've never been entirely happy with the translations I've read. So I've rendered my favorite parts myself. 





Metamorphosis



Like brothers are the sleeping and the dead. 

Nothing lasts. The house you build 

collapses in its age. A legacy is lost. 

The hatred of my enemy 

unties itself in death. 

The river rises high enough 

to drown us all,

but returns, in time, to its bed. 

The creature that seizes the little fish

must one day climb a reed and slough its husk, 

must crawl from the shell of himself

as a dragonfly. His watery wings gleam. 

They dry in the Sun's breath. 





Pursuit



Sleepless days and nights

have worn me, have hollowed my cheeks. 

Grief fills my flesh. 

Death invades my house, my bed. 

Wherever I guide my steps, 

There death moves too.  





Voice from the Underworld



Have you seen a man who died in foreign land,

from accident or age?

I have. He sits alone and screams

and tears his fingernails out.



Have you seen a man who died in the wild,

his corpse despoiled by jackals?

I have. He wanders half-clothed

and cannot rest. 



Have you seen a man with no kinsmen left

alive to love him?

I have. In the underworld

he eats the cauldron's scrapings, 

the food the maggots will not eat. 




Photo by Dee Puett