Humbaba

In Uruk’s glow, where pride builds walls of stone,

A king rose up to chase what gods forbid.

“Through cedar dark,” he swore, “I’ll carve my throne…

Let cedars kneel, as ancient gods once did.”

But nature knows the cost of man’s ascent,

And answers glory with its own lament.

Humbaba waits where sky and forest fuse,

A shape not born but breathed from Earth’s rage.

No beast, no man - just truth the earth still bruises,

Whose breath can strip the centuries from age.

His voice: a flood. His stare: the breaking wave.

His hands: the laws no mortal soul can brave.

Enkidu saw what cities could not hear:

“The wild is not your ladders, but your graves.

It shaped my soul—I feel its silence near.

He bends bones with sound, his fury... enslave.

And strikes in places fire still calls itself brave”

But kings hear glory in the axe’s song,

And swing to silence what’s survived so long.

They found the threshold veiled in sacred breath,

Where roots ran deep with secrets never told.

Humbaba did not plead or bargain death…

He stood as ruin: upright, raw, and bold.

No scribe preserved what passed in Cedar night,

Just scars scorched where ruin met the light.

A cry split heaven, cedars bled the sun,

And silence drank the cost of every scream.

The wild fell still, its final guardian done,

Yet man rejoiced inside a shattered dream.

For glory came - but stained in forest blood,

A monument to hubris in the mud.

And Enkidu, now sick with mortal frost,

Would learn that fame outlives the beating heart.

The king stood tall, but saw what he had lost…

That conquest cracks the world it claims to chart.

The trees remember, though the walls may gleam…

The wild still haunts the edges of the dream.

- UpsilonA