Enkidu

Based on the ancient Akkadian epic 'Gilgamesh', the loss of innocent sexuality and the civilisation of the 'wild man'

---

I ran wild, wildly panting,
Wildly seeing, wildy growing.
Earth and Wind were my lovers,
Competing to entice me.
Nimble Air danced for me
In sudden whorls of fallen leaves,
And gold-rippling grass stalks.
She was a fickle lover-
Laughing as I searched for her,
My hair of dirt and sweat whipped,
Blinding, across my eyes.
Earth was cool and slow.
I stepped on soft loam under beechwoods,
Mud slid over each toe,
Drawing pale members down.
I lay with her under dark Air’s surface,
Under bright-winking eyes, knowing.
She embraced me oozingly, clasping
Mineral tendrils wrapping wet around as I slept,
But cracked with grief
When I danced with Wind again.

Berries the cool one offered lightly-
Sour-bright drops of dark Earth-blood
Beading from slender stalk-wounds;
Roots, jealous guarded, I fought her for,
Parting her crumbling flesh with blackened nails
And tearing out the starchy secrets.
Wind gave me shivering feathered flight,
Catching corner vision.
Small nips and tinglings crawled
From rough bark onto skin, as I waited
In tree limbs and crowding leaf blades.
Then, leaping, featherless, I grasped
And fell, member and wings flailing.
I cracked and parted
warm red breasts
Drinking life-juice in greedy draughts.
These different pleasures were cruel-sweet:
They tore my flesh too; I howled
Back their death-cries to the moon.

Each whistle and breath in all the wild woods,
Every cock of sinew and muscle, told direction
Each cunt-musk smell readiness
To fuck, give birth,
Rut till exhaustion overpowered -
Or death came swiftly.
And they knew me,
Nuzzling in the dark as I slept.
They sniffed out my secrets too,
The creatures of the bark-clad landscape.

Then came She
Scent-musk hung alone in the air,
Flower luring me moth-like to its heavy warmth.
Telling nothing, blurring other senses – briefly
- before Wind snatched it jealously away.
She was silky-swathed, frayed
Threading edges snagging teasingly,
Pulling bright petals tight over skin
Nectar-sweet and darkly cloistered secrets.
She did not fuck, like nighting creatures,
This female from another place,
Nor creeping slow embrace of mud and salt.
She made love, with knowledge:
Stroking, toying, waiting; my body
So many wheels and cogs that she controlled.

She tended me in ways unknown; before un-missed:
Washed red Earth from wiry limbs
- fled in tearful drops away;
Blazed brown food I caught and gathered
- life-blood juices dried and silent;
Dressed me in cloth rough and cloying
-Wind could not reach to stroke;
Taught me how to speak
- I knew her name, Shamhat, she called herself
(Whore, others);
Taught writing in sharp flint marks
- spooring, scratching life-marks faded from mind.
She moulded, dried, fired me Man
Out of the dark wet clay.
Brittle, impermeable, glazed.

But then she left -
Only scent-musk drops stayed heavy in the air
Which Wind left hanging to torture me;
And words to draw out hard the
Cold, Hunger, Dirt, Discomfort,
Hung there with them.
Earth tore my nails as I wrestled with her,
Smeared cloth clothes angrily, and Wind
Tore at them in rage at my neglect,
Carried feathered wings away as I tried to snatch.
Spoor and musk and snort
No longer spoke to me:
I had dully lost their language.
So, walking alone in the leaf-bark vault, blindly,
I wandered hollow in the wilderness.