Thought for the Day

All that is left to one who grieves is convalescence, 

no change of heart or spiritual conversion, for the heart 

has changed. And the spirit has been converted 

to a thing that sees how much it costs to lose a friend it loved.

~ from "Gilgamesh"

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Quoted from Herbert Mason, "Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative" (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Co., 1970; New Afterword, 2003); Requoted in Chard deNiord, "Singing Back to the World: A Conversation with U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limon", World Literature Today, November/December 2022, page 48.

 

Gilgamesh is an ancient Babyonian epic.  

Herbert Mason, Writer and Translator; Scholar of Arabic and Islamic Studies; Emeritus University Professor and William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of History and Religion, Boston University