So too perhaps
even the dead in the ground may be denied
all
repose: a force more pitiless
than life pulls them thence, from
all
around
driving them toward this coast - ghosts
tortured by human memories, breaths
without voice or substance, betrayed
by darkness; and even now their thwarted flights,
so close to us still, brush by,
then drift down in the sea
that sifts them.....
Translated from the Italian
by
William Arrowsmith
Ishtar and Gilgamesh
(from Tablet
VI
of
The Gilgamesh Epic)*
When Gilgamesh the king came back to the city
after the victory over the demon Huwawa,
he washed the filth of battle from his hair
and washed the filth of battle from his body,
put on new clothes, a clean robe and a cloak
tied with a sash, and cleaned and polished the weapons
that had been bloody with the hateful blood
of the demon Huwawa, guardian of the forest,
and put a tiara on his shining hair,
so that he looked as beautiful as a bridegroom.
*Translator's Note: This metrical version of
The Gilgamesh Epic
will be published this May by Farrar,
Straus
&
Giroux. It is based on the literal translation by E. A. Speiser in
Ancient Near Eastern TexIS
Relatillg
to
the Old Testamell/.
Also consulted were
Gilgamesh
by John Gardner and John Maier,
TIlt
Epic
tij
Gilgamesh
by Maureen Kovacs, and the free prose version by N . K. Sandars,
The Epic
of
Gilgamesh.
