I am continuing here the serial publication of my novel called The One Who Looked on the Deeps. This novel retells the story of Gilgamesh in the context of the Iraq War. Part One can be found here and Part Two can be found here. Enjoy! V. It was the lamentation of the rampart and the plain; the wail of time, and everything demeaned by time; of what lay strewn about the torrid undulations and the agony of five millennia sifted among their changes; of broken seeds and broken lives; youth immolated on preposterous altars, and the shattered spirits dissipated, like an incense, at their passing; all this, and the weird contention of nature with its own purposes – force stymied by other force – that ends in pain and wastage what might have rooted, sprung heavenward from vital impulse, and so lived. It was a salutation beyond silence, vainly heard and vainly proffered; a feeble donative submitted, granted, consciously put forth with decorous despondency, by creatures fully bewildered with the image of their own fate, who cannot, even in the indisputable presence of that fate, regard the fallen as entirely unmindful of their homage; and so a call to repose for those who can no longer wake or repose; who cannot fight, nor stand for, nor raven glory in, but languish in a particulate state unfathomable, inadmissible, by the striving and the quick, who by this rite ward off all concept of the unthinkable. It was these things, but also a breath, a song, a hymn ineffably willed by a clot of dust aspiring after purposes unencompassed by the laws of dust, and thereby enacting in the midst of the assembly a consolation the gathered remnant may accede to or defy. So the trumpet conferred its sterling melody over the remains of Lieutenant Wild, commemorating, as alone it is in the power of the living to commemorate, the devotion of the mighty soldier now defeated, the slayer slain.
The One Who Looked on the Deeps, Part 3 of 4
The One Who Looked on the Deeps, Part 3 of 4
The One Who Looked on the Deeps, Part 3 of 4
I am continuing here the serial publication of my novel called The One Who Looked on the Deeps. This novel retells the story of Gilgamesh in the context of the Iraq War. Part One can be found here and Part Two can be found here. Enjoy! V. It was the lamentation of the rampart and the plain; the wail of time, and everything demeaned by time; of what lay strewn about the torrid undulations and the agony of five millennia sifted among their changes; of broken seeds and broken lives; youth immolated on preposterous altars, and the shattered spirits dissipated, like an incense, at their passing; all this, and the weird contention of nature with its own purposes – force stymied by other force – that ends in pain and wastage what might have rooted, sprung heavenward from vital impulse, and so lived. It was a salutation beyond silence, vainly heard and vainly proffered; a feeble donative submitted, granted, consciously put forth with decorous despondency, by creatures fully bewildered with the image of their own fate, who cannot, even in the indisputable presence of that fate, regard the fallen as entirely unmindful of their homage; and so a call to repose for those who can no longer wake or repose; who cannot fight, nor stand for, nor raven glory in, but languish in a particulate state unfathomable, inadmissible, by the striving and the quick, who by this rite ward off all concept of the unthinkable. It was these things, but also a breath, a song, a hymn ineffably willed by a clot of dust aspiring after purposes unencompassed by the laws of dust, and thereby enacting in the midst of the assembly a consolation the gathered remnant may accede to or defy. So the trumpet conferred its sterling melody over the remains of Lieutenant Wild, commemorating, as alone it is in the power of the living to commemorate, the devotion of the mighty soldier now defeated, the slayer slain.