David Ferry > Quotes

“How long does a building stand before it falls?
How long does a contract last? How long will brothers

share the inheritance before they quarrel?
How long does hatred, for that matter, last?

Time after time the river has risen and flooded.
The insect leaves the cocoon to live but a minute.

How long is the eye able to look at the sun?
From the very beginning nothing at all has lasted.

See how the dead and the sleeping resemble each other.
Seen together, they are the image of death.

The simple man and the ruler resemble each other.
The face of the one will darken like that of the other.”
― David Ferry, The Epic of Gilgamesh

“Gilgamesh wandered in the wilderness grieving over the death of Enkidu and weeping saying: “Enkidu has died. Must I die too? Must Gilgamesh be like that?” Gilgamesh felt the fear of it in his belly. He said to himself that he would seek the son of Ubartutu, Utnapishtim, he, the only one of men by means of whom he might find out how death could be avoided. He said to himself that he would hasten to him, the dangers of the journey notwithstanding.”
― David Ferry, Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse

“The punishment should always fit the crime.
Let him who has performed an evil act

be punished for that act. Let not the flood
be brought down on the heads of all for what

one man has done; and he who has transgressed,
show pity to him, lest he be cut off

from all his fellows. Better that a lion
should come into the village and prey upon it,

taking a few, than that the flood drown all.
Better a wolf should find its ravening way

into the fold, devouring some, much better
than that the flood turn all that breathes to clay.

Better that famine starve a few of them
than that a harvest of waters obliterate all.

Better that Erra the plague god, better that he
take hold of some, seize them and bear them away

to the Underworld, than that the flood drown all.”
― David Ferry, Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse