I have a twin who bears my name;
Bears it about with him in shame;
Who goes a way I would not go;
Has knowledge of things I would not know;
When I was brave he was afraid;
He told the truth, I lied;
What’ s sweet to me tastes bitter to him;
My friends, my friends, he doesn’ t love them;
I walk the daylight in his dream;
He breathes the air of my nightmare.
It is an afternoon toward the end of August:
Autumnal weather, cool following on,
And riding in, after the heat of summer,
Into the empty afternoon shade and light,
The shade full of light without any thickness at all;
You can see right through and right down into the depth
Of the light and shade of the afternoon; there isn’ t
Any weight of the summer pressing down.
i
Gilgamesh spoke and said to the old man then:
"When I looked at you I thought that you were not
a man, one made like me; I had resolved
to challenge you as one might challenge a demon,
a stranger-adversary. But now I see
that you are Utnapishtim, made like me,
a man, the one I sought, the one from whom
I might find out how death can be avoided.
Tell me then, father, how it came about
that you were admitted to the company
Alone in the library room, even when others
Are there in the room, alone, except for themselves:
There is the illusion of peace; the air in the room
Is stilled; there are reading lights on the tables,
Looking as if they're reading, looking as if
They're studying the text, and understanding,
Shedding light on what the words are saying;
But under their steady imbecile gaze the page
Is blank, patiently waiting not to be blank.
By the last few times we saw her it was clear
That things were different. When you tried to help her
Get out of the car or get from the car to the door
Or across the apartment house hall to the elevator
There was a new sense of heaviness
Or of inertia in the body. It wasn’ t
That she was less willing to be helped to walk
But that the walking itself had become less willing.
The unclean spirits cry out in the body
Or mind of the guest Ellen in a loud voice
Torment me not, and in the fury of her unclean
Hands beating the air in some kind of unending torment —
Nobody witnessing could possibly know the event
That cast upon her the spell of this enchantment.
