The Epic of Gilgamesh
A play.
Way back when,
when men were still a novelty,
and what towns there were
were smaller than a ballpark,
smaller, often, than a pitch-and-putt
and no one sentimentalized the out-of-doors;
when every man was a man of few words
because there were only a few,
and those so open-ended and adaptable
that to pin them down required great force
and weighted presentation,
so that there was no such thing as a meaningless gesture
and people watched each other β
but there were still, believe me, many secrets
and no one was any the wiser -
many years ago and far away
in the ungenerous badlands of a distant country
where the hot sun addled what the cold night froze
and things were rough all over,
there stood what seemed to it's inhabitants
a very splendid city.
It boasted walls, fine wall, made out of stone
and terrible tall,
and monuments - lot's of monuments -
and most remarkably, a gigantic king.
The cities name was Uruk, or Uruk of the Walls,
and the king was called King Gilgamesh.
King Gilgamesh had a passion for marvels -
and since King Gilgamesh was something of a marvel himself,
the men of Uruk were at pains
to make him comfortable.
For King Gilgamesh was governed only by his passions,
and the city of Uruk was governed only by King Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh: I am sorry for Enkindu that he died,
he was my brother.
And I am sorrier still that I lost Enkindu
Whom I least of all wanted to lose
and with whom I was friends.
But I am doubly sorry
that I, who have until now never lost anything
Should be stolen from in this manner,
For while I have made selections
Which are a kind of loss,
I have never before been denied.
And I am sorriest of all
And the reason I am crying is
That the death of my brother Enkindu
Has suggested to me that I'll die too
Someday
And I'm scared.
The Old Man: And so King Gilgamesh
the great King Gilgamesh
was bested by a little thing
an unheroic snake
and he broke down altogether
and he wept the tears of a furious child
for he knew himself to be a failure
and he held himself cheap
and there wasn't a thing which he cared to do
and there wasn't a thing for which he cared
and he knew the frustration
of one who cannot have
what he thinks he wants
and he knew the shame
of one who knows that at least in part
he was himself the author
of his own undoing
and he knew the rage
the hideous rage
the helpless, hopeless rage
of somebody who's been stolen from
who knows he will always be stolen from
because he's here
because he's human
and because he must be off his guard
from time to time.
But as bad as these things were -
and they were very bad-
they did not trouble him so much as did the cold and awful
certainty
that he had not truly wished for
this bauble he had been denied.
That it would not and could not have made him happy.
That the only joy it promised wasn't joy at all
But tremulous relief
at being spared the pain of its loss.
And it was this ironic knowledge of
his own, his inconsolable vanity,
Which made him hate his life and everything he had.
And it was this self-same knowledge
Which later gave him the strength, the presence of mind,
And the imagination to act out the rest of his life
As decent and productive man.
So it was with Gilgamesh.
So it has always been.