Herbert Mason Quotes

#1. [Humbaba's] sound is like a flood's sound
Slowly forming in the distance,
Then enveloping all other sounds

Herbert Mason

#2. He entered the city asked a blind man if he had ever heard the name Enkidu, and the old man shrugged and shook his head, then turned away, as if to say, 'It is impossible to keep the names of friends whom we have lost

Herbert Mason

#3. Gilgamesh was called a god and a man; Enkidu was an animal and a man. It is the story of their becoming human together.

Herbert Mason

#4. As if some faces could be doorways in
To life one has an image of
But never sees. The vista was
A strange and beautiful
Release

Herbert Mason

#5. As when we can recall so vividly
We almost touch,
Or think of all the gestures that we failed
To make.

Herbert Mason

#6. All that is left to one who grieves
Is convalescence. No change of heart or spiritual
Conversion, for the heart has changed
And the soul has been converted
To a thing that sees
How much it costs to lose a friend it loved.

Herbert Mason

#7. It could go on for years and years,
And has, for centuries,
For being human holds a special grief
Of privacy within the universe
That yearns and waits to be retouched
By someone who can take away
The memory of death.

Herbert Mason

#8. You are a human being now, not like them [the animals].

Herbert Mason

#9. He imagined the gazelles raising the dry dust
Like soft brush floating on the crests of sand.

Herbert Mason

#10. Even the gods
Cowered like dogs at what they had done.

Herbert Mason

#11. Don't moralize at me! I have no love
For images, old gods, prophetic words.
I want to talk to Utnapishtim!
Tell me how.

Herbert Mason

#12. But my hand was too small to do the gathering. [Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 79]

Herbert Mason

#13. Friendship is vowing toward immortality and does not know the passing away of beauty (Though take care!) because it aims for the spirit. Many years ago through loss I learned that love is wrung from our inmost heart until only the loved one is and we are not.

Herbert Mason

#14. He looked at the walls,
Awed at the heights
His people had achieved
And for a moment -- just a moment --
All that lay behind him
Passed from view.

Herbert Mason

#15. Everything had life to me,' he heard Enkidu murmur, 'the sky, the storm, the earth, water, wandering, the moon and its three children, salt, even my hand had life. It's gone. It's gone.

Herbert Mason

#16. They fell like wolves
At each other's throats,
Like bulls bellowing,
And horses gasping for breath
That have run all day.

Herbert Mason