The Victory Without Triumph III or The Tale of the Hero (Heracles)
In the twilight of life, there on the cold ground, before the laconic gaze of my lineage, I heard more moans and more laments… she had also departed. Astonished, with my last breaths, I listened as if I were drifting away, as if I were walking fast and the sounds and images became less clear. I heard that her soul was regretful, regretful of the deception she fell into that afternoon when the centaur said to her: – «Come, dear, do not fear, come closer to me, I know I wanted to harm you but I assure you I have something for you. I swear, by the gods present today and those absent, under the last rays of my eyes, that with my blood, your beloved will be yours again, faithful to you, to your essence, to your prudence, and even in your absence. My child, take and keep in that crystal your carry, the blood that will bring joy back, make love tarry, the magic elixir to rekindle the light, to bring back your smile, so true, so bright.»
She did just that. With jealousy and desperation’s might, she kept that evil liquid tight, for me, to renew our love and fidelity’s right. Now this queen, seeing what she had done, how she fell into lies spun by that vile, abject, despicable one, decided it was time to find her man, to seek him in those mysteries of the beyond’s span, in the cold rivers Orpheus had dared, when his beloved he spared. Those rivers where only the dead sail, awaiting the crossing before Cerberus’ veil, where my uncle receives all the same, without a glance or name. Driven mad by her plight, she chose that fatal night, instead of rekindling love’s flame, she extinguished it, erasing me from Gaia’s frame. And so, enflamed by grief and despairs’ art, she plunged a lethal weapon into her heart, fulfilling, without consent, that dire prophecy sent: – «alive or dead, I will end your plight.» How mysterious fate’s flight! The crossroads and paths that corrode or fork, diverge, and fork again…almost infinitely, such is the journey of man.
I closed and opened my eyes, for a moment not fully wise, but there I was, in my room once more, solitary, eerie, taciturn at its core. White as pearl and silent as a butterfly’s flight. Everything, the stars, the firmament, and the maidens fair; the bed, a mirror, a deck of cards there; all seemed infinite, for that point in the upper corner of my room, where I saw the cosmos’ bloom, was closing little by little. I saw the blue sea and the tranquil mountain’s mantle, I saw myself in great campaigns’ rattle, in another time, in another form, but it was me, in another place, on another norm.
The end
MLF
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