“When Clay Weeps”
A poetic tribute to Gilgamesh and Enkidu
Beneath a sky of burning stars,
Uruk's high walls gleamed like scars
cut into time—immense, precise—
where kings were gods, and men were dice.
Gilgamesh, carved out of storm and sun,
two-thirds divine, yet wholly undone,
bored with power, drunk on might,
wrestled shadows in the heat of night.
Then came Enkidu, beast-born and bold,
with eyes like flint and hair like mold
of forest boughs, of untouched place—
the wilderness written on his face.
They met like meteors—fierce and fast—
and fought until their rage was past.
Then, laughing, stood where blood had pooled,
and in that moment, gods were fooled.
They crossed into cedar-scented gloom,
to fell a giant, shape their doom.
And when the gods struck back with grief,
they cleaved the world with disbelief.
Enkidu’s breath fled in the dark,
his voice a ghost, his limbs grown stark.
And Gilgamesh—stone turned to skin—
sought death’s edge to pull him in.
He wandered roads where no man goes,
spoke with alewives, fought with crows,
and found the flood that washed the land,
held time’s seed in his trembling hand.
But life, a serpent, sly and thin,
stole the fruit he held within.
So he returned, not with the key,
but with the tale of what can’t be.
He carved in stone his city’s face,
a wall, a name, a time, a place.
For though we die and dust returns,
a soul may live if someone learns.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest surviving works of literature, is hardly easy reading. But Andrew George’s translation from the Akkadian is strikingly accessible – a meditation on power and mortality.
I enlisted the poetic talent of Chat GPT to craft a verse unclasping the essence of a small part of this 4000 year old poem from ancient Iraq.
A fascination unleashed.
Cheers
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