One way ticket

Ut-napishtim speaks to Gilgamesh:

Mankind's fame is cut down like reeds in a reed-bed.

A fine young man, a fine girl,

[here's a gap in the text] of Death.

Nobody sees Death,

Nobody sees the face of Death,

Nobody hears the voice of Death.

Savage Death just cuts mankind down.

And earlier, Enkidu tells Gilgamesh his dream about his own death:

(I was taken) to the house which those who enter cannot leave,

On the road where travelling in one way only,

To the house where those who stay are deprived of light,

Where dust is their food, and clay their bread.

Ages passed by, and another poet, Shakespeare, wrote:

Fear no more the heat o' the sun
Nor the furious winters' rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' th' great;
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust. (from Cymbeline)

And earlier, another poet, Catullus, wrote in Roma aeterna about a road to the land of the dead, the dark road leading illuc, unde negant redire quemquam, even if it is only a dead sparrow of his mistress.

 

It's really thrilling to find such similarities in poems distant in time and place.