Epic Tale of Gilgamesh XI

In dust and dusk where fate is frayed,
He treads where time itself decayed,
A king unchained yet bound by grief,
A flame within a fallen leaf.
His shadow sprawled on hallowed stone,
Where gods once whispered, winds have moaned—
The echoes kissed his weary ear,
Yet none could weave his withered fear.

He dreamt of death, a silver tide,
Where shattered stars in silence glide,
Where Enkidu, a ghostly trace,
Still haunts the hollows of his face.
What use is power, palace, throne?
What use is gold when one’s alone?
O’ Uruk’s walls, though vast and grand,
Crack ‘neath the weight of mortal sand.

Through cedar groves and wraithlike mist,
He chased the fate the fates had kissed—
A sorrowed step, a silent plea,
A man at war with destiny.
The gods, they laughed with lips of lead,
They plucked his hope, they wove his thread,
Yet still he ran with fervent breath,
To rob the roots of ruthless death.

The serpent coiled where shadows crept,
It stole the youth while Gilgamesh slept.
Oh cruel design! Oh fleeting bliss!
He woke to naught but nothingness.
The dawn derides, the dusk deceives,
The sun betrays, the night bereaves.
Each moment folds into the next,
A hymn unwritten, lost, perplexed.

His fingers grazed the face of fate,
Yet dust it was—dispersed, irate.
What strength can stitch the severed thread
That weaves the living to the dead?
For even kings, with crowns of fire,
Are caged beneath the world's attire—
For even gods, in skies unknown,
Have crumbled where their names were sown.

He knelt where wisdom weeps unseen,
Between the cracks of what has been.
The wind arose, a hymn of old,
It hummed of loss, it sang of cold—
Of how the sea consumes the shore,
Of how all gods demand far more
Than what the hands of mortals give,
Than what the soul can bear to live.

And yet he rose, though torn, unmade,
A man, a myth, a breath delayed.
Not god, not beast, nor deathless wraith,
But something shaped by loss and faith.
He carved his name in fading stone,
A final truth that time would own.
For in the end, what tale remains?
Not flesh, nor gold—but what sustains.

The tale of kings will drown in dust,
Yet words will walk when bones are rust.
No hand can halt the chime of doom,
But legends bloom where men assume
That walls may fall, and worlds may break,
Yet echoes sing when spirits wake.
And in the hush where empires fade,
Still beats the myth that man has made.