Caligula
By Gurgen Barents

 

And not great.
There are no emperors, patricians, or plebeians...
Oh, how blind and how stupid is death!

 

I didn't think
How painful it is to die.
Someone else's death
Looked so beautiful!

 

Death does not know
That I am immortal
That I am associated
By the Senate
My bodyguard,
This scoundrel, this nit,
He dared
To abort in flight
The most pricelessof lives!

 

I haven't died yet!
Not dead yet!
'Cause I'm a god
It's not easy to kill me...

 

Nero

 

When the guard brought the dagger
And helped him to die with dignity,
Nero's consciousness was not darkened
Pictures of burnt Rome
Images of Lost Christians
Or his Mother Agrippina...
The emperor complained only
That this ungrateful
And this crazy world
Leaves the greatest actor of all time...

 

Gurgen Barents (Gurgen S. Karapetyan) from U.S. is a poet, prose writer, translator, journalist, and literary critic. He has a Ph.D. of Philology, is a member of the International Academy of Literature and Art. author of more than 2000 publications, and several dozen translated books. His poems and translations were published in dozens of anthological collections of modern Armenian and Slavic poets. The works have been translated into English, Armenian, Bulgarian, German, Ukrainian, Slovak, Serbian, Polish, Persian, and other languages. He has won many international literary awards.