I'm coming back from the war again. Only when I see the house, I allow myself to breathe evenly. The peace of home convinces me that everything is over and I am still alive. Of course, someday I will be killed, but, oh, happiness, not this time.

I dismount and walk the rest of the way, leading the horse by the bridle. My homestead is getting closer, and it's getting harder to resist the languor of anticipation of future joys. A rest in the shade of olives, a generous lunch, meetings with the noble and outstanding people of Rome, the caresses and joys of my beloved wife Flora ... And, of course, a secret passion that does not leave me neither in the days of war, nor in the calm of truces, nor in campaigns, nor at home, nor in the darkness of the night, nor in the solemnity of the dawns. Only it – poetry - fills my vain life with meaning, because it helps the soul striving upward to put up with the everywhere triumphant baseness.

But first, a tribute to my earthly love, Flora. A creature so natural, filled with the juices of the earth, that, falling into her arms, I seem to descend from heaven and go to the halls of Proserpine, led by the hand of the winter captive of Pluto. Yes, her place is there, in the heat of the earth, from where she comes to the surface in the spring with thousands of grasses and trees that reach out to the sky as to her father, but they also remember her husband's power. One day Pluto will look at them sternly, get jealous and demand an oath of allegiance - death and return to the dust. That's how Flora sometimes looks at me and is jealous of the sky and its inhabitants - muses, my inspiring friends, because she knows that she will not reach these heights, and I am traveling up alone. And she takes me by the hand, leads me into an alcove and opens a secret path to her inner empire, hot and cramped, and calls me the only emperor. But am I the emperor? And is it the only one? Yes, it's cramped and stuffy for me there, but I still go down there again and again, so that then, having learned the depths, I can soar even more up the hexameter ladder. The soul remembers where its real home is. Isn't that why, at the first danger to the motherland, I run to the battlefields, these Mars tracts?

However, it's time to go. I continue the way that was frozen. I silently open the gate – I want to appear suddenly, catching her by surprise. What for? I am excited by the spontaneity of an unannounced meeting, the sincerity of surprised eyes, the untrained exclamations of a welcoming speech. And I slowly walk along the path to the house, noticing the absence of servants and a strange silence, as if the house itself and its geniuses have fallen asleep in anticipation of the master's power. Here I am in the house. I'm listening. I go to the quiet sounds - stairs, a gallery, a row of rooms with curtains instead of doors. I stop near one of them, and the last doubts melt away – I have heard these sounds many times, usually as an intermittent part intertwined with the night chorus of crickets. But now this part did not deafen me with its proximity to my ear, it sounded there, behind the curtain, and I was not the cause of it.

I'm coming in. They immediately notice me, until recently the former one is splitting in two. Fright and tension… They are frozen on the bed, forgetting to cover up, and there is no determination to act on their faces. So, I will decide their fate without resistance, and this court will not be burdened with long debates of the parties – the fault is too obvious. Well, then I won't delay. I approach the bed, pull out the sword and thrust it into the stomach, gently but strongly, without hesitation and trembling, as I once entered it with living flesh. But the flesh of steel does not give life, only takes it away. And life flowed out of her like a red river, spreading out on a snow-white bed with a flood unknown to these edges. She lies on the pillows, naked and silent, looking up with eyes even more empty than ever, and her lover swelled with tears like a cloud with rain, and shed moisture, but not the one for which he came. These tears are not for Flora, but for myself. After all, he has already realized that the court will be fair to him.

The cypress tree has turned into a giant sundial. His shadow stubbornly crawls on the ground, reminding of the unstoppable passage of time. And the tarnished beauty of Flora reminds us even more about it. When you look at a face immediately after death, it seems as if time has stopped forever and nothing will change in these features anymore. This is exactly what a lover wants, because then you can indefinitely prolong the presence, deceiving and even canceling death. The only price is eternal silence, but there is a considerable charm in it.

But, alas... The river of time is equally deep, and even death does not mean stopping the movement of nature. That's probably why the Egyptians made death masks covering their faces with eternal gold. You can look at the mask until the eyes of the beholder fail, and what is under it does not matter. Everything is securely hidden.

But I'm not an Egyptian, I'm a Roman, and I don't like secrecy at all. Therefore, Flora lies in front of me as she is: on a white, shining bed, her naked body darkens as before. She is lying on her back, but she no longer sees the sky, if she ever noticed it above her. Flora is lying, and I'm sitting nearby and looking - sometimes at her, sometimes at the nature around us, gradually regaining its unconditional rights to this woman. I tried to get my Proserpine out of the earth kingdom, as Orpheus once tried to take Eurydice with him, but I failed in the same way, but not because I looked around – she looked around. And now I finally let go of her, threw a weak limp hand. I don't want to be your Pluto forever, I'm not him. And she walks away, backs away, farther and faster, and now her once strict silhouette blurs and loses its shape, promising to completely merge with the landscape around. The exit to the outside is closed, there is only an observation slot through which I timidly peek at the merging of my wife with the darkness. And sometimes I look at a scroll, on which I slowly write lines about the hard struggle of the soul for freedom, separateness and domination.

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That's it, get out, unlucky lover. Can I call you Pluto? Your imprisonment in the earthen cavern is over. Catch the rope. Shut up, I don't need your excuses! I've seen everything, and words don't matter anymore. How weak you are, poor man, but at least you could see the sun – no small reason to be grateful! And now you will have another reason for gratitude – a meeting with your beloved. Yes, it's her, don't you recognize it? At the moment of intimacy, she was different, don't you think? But this only means that you saw only the outside and did not know how or did not want to look deep into it at all. You saw the present, neglecting the future. And the future of each of us - here it is, in front of you. Who has it earlier, who has it later, but it is equally inevitable. Yes, my friend, you have it earlier than many. What? Let go? Give up hope, since you entered here. It is better to approach Flora, take her hand, cling to her, give a kiss to the last praise of the harmony of the whole decomposing into elements. See how generous I am?

And now lie down, just as you were lying on it when I entered my house. Well, why are you procrastinating, lie down, lie down... let me help you with a blow. Don't cry, don't, because you're a man. I know that it is sweeter and more pleasant to come into contact with young tender skin than with corpse rot, but this is the only and inevitable way for you to prolong your life a little more. That's fine… Hands to hands, feet to feet, trunk to trunk, face to face. Tie it tightly with a rope and wait as long as it takes. Alas, I am not so original – this is not my idea, it was executed by Etruscan pirates, and we now practice only occasionally, in special cases when death needs to be filled with meaning.

This is exactly the case now, so I'm sorry. Lips to lips... eyes to eyes… More precisely, to the empty eye sockets, blackening sinkholes, the gifts of the crow to eternal blindness. How do you like her body? Is it more tender than before? You are wrong if you think that there is no life in it: there is no less of it here than before. The extinguished star has awakened thousands of creatures from sleep, feasting on its fading brilliance. They came to draw a line, to take the baton from the hands of the fallen, to drink her juices, giving the honor of his secret mother.

And they do their work willingly, always in motion: from the surface - deep into, then vice versa. And now they have more space and more food, because the body has doubled, merged with another, and where there was a limit, there was an airless bridge to another nature, and the little workers will crawl along it and join you, Pluto, and pretty soon they will penetrate inside. The darkness will begin to devour you, destroy you, desecrate purity and innocence, drag you back into the ground. You will feel the curse of the soul, forced to endure the encroachments of the body and its indispensable triumph, the soul, unable to break the connection and exist separately. Here it is, a true merger, tragic and hopeless! You didn't even dream about it when you came here, because even poets couldn't imagine it, and therefore I have a chance to be the first to describe this drama truly truthfully. Others didactically wrote about danger, and I will write about victory! As soon as you stop crying and go quiet forever, in an hour, a day or a week... As soon as you stop crying…

When Orpheus finds Eurydice in a pile of rags and junk,

Clean her face and blow the dust off the limbs of the obstinate,

He will lead her up, closer to the sun,

What can heal the burns, the scars of the kisses of darkness.

She will first follow him in a submissive determination,

But along the way, when the light dawns, it will turn around drearily,

Unable to forget all the sweetness of carnal pleasures,

That the all-powerful lord gave her the earth.

"I won't go–" the sad one will whisper in real estate,

"I'm staying, and I'll be Pluto's mistress here,

The intercessor and patroness of those,

To whom the radiance of the sun burns the eyes.

Merging of bodies, victory of the belly, movement of juices

And the poison of the corpse from body to body, the tread of blackness,

Unity in decomposition, mixing of the flesh –

The joys that I will give up forever,

I don't think I can. Go, grass, trees, and you, Orpheus,

And leave me the dear dead, at the expense of which

I will become bigger and stronger thanks to coitus

Fragile matters in the inextricable embrace of death."

And Orpheus will set off alone, return to the people,

Tell them that he is to blame for everything, and sing wistfully,

Secretly rejoicing that his lyre

It sounds freer and more resonant than usual,

Covering the poet and singer with immortal glory.