The Dream of Gilgamesh: Mourning the Loss of the Rock from the Sky

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The Epic of Gilgamesh and its related ancient tales have long been a source of inspiration for me, often woven into my prose. Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of reading an essay by Andrew George, written in 2012, which I highly recommend to your attention: The Mayfly on the River: Individual and Collective Destiny in the Epic of Gilgamesh. As with all of George’s works, this essay is masterful, and it resonated with much of my recent work. By coincidence, his reference to the mayfly aligned perfectly with a sub-theme of a monograph I have been developing over the past several weeks.

Inspired by these reflections and my own experience with the loss of close friends, I chose to explore The Epic of Gilgamesh through poetry, marking a departure from my usual prose. Below, I offer a poem that captures a dream in which Gilgamesh contemplates the profound absence of Enkidu, his friend and companion, who met death as punishment for the transgressions he and Gilgamesh committed against the gods. The timeless relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu seemed to me a fitting metaphor for the sorrow that accompanies the loss of friends and the enduring nature of their memory.

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The Dream of Gilgamesh

In the shadows of my sleep, you came,
Enkidu, my brother, carved from the heavens,
The rock that fell to earth and struck me whole.
But now the earth has claimed you,
Silent is the storm of your breath,
Felled like the great cedar, your might is no more.
I reach for you, yet grasp but dust.

The gods whisper through the winds,
Enkidu, you are beyond my reach,
Though I call, your name echoes
Through the empty halls of Uruk,
A soundless shadow, a memory unmade.

In the dream, I see you on the plain,
Your laughter rolls like thunder once more,
Yet it is distant, swallowed by the sky.
I run to you, but the earth swallows my feet,
The horizon stretches and bends,
And you fade, a shadow of stars,
Leaving me to wrestle with the night.

Oh, Enkidu, my companion, my rock from the heavens,
In life, you steadied me, made my heart whole.
Now the world is too wide,
The journey too long.
What joy can be found in Uruk’s walls,
Without your hand upon my shoulder?
You lie beneath the river stones,
And I am left to wander the desolate road alone.