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Abstract: The purpose of the article is to study the basics of K. Simonov’s mythopoetics on the material of the poem You told me: “I love you”… The material of the study was the final version of the poem, however, in order to clarify the components of the revealed structure, the early version of the work is also involved. The work is based on the structural method of studying the lexical level of a poem; it is supplemented by an ethnolinguistic approach. In the first part of the text, the complex love relationships of lyrical heroes are recreated. The article shows that they are represented with the help of a clear system of binary oppositions: “night – morning”, “soul – body”, “speaking – silence”. The poet does not just demonstrate the principle of thinking, which is close to mythological. It is shown that the nature of the pairs, and the interpretation of their components by Simonov, is based on Slavic folk ideas. Only the recognition of the heroine in her feelings can resolve the dissonance of day and night relationships. The harmonizing role that Simonov assigns to enunciation the word “love” confirms Yu. Stepanov’s hypothesis of about the closeness of the concepts of “word” and “miracle” in Indo-European languages. In the second part of the poem, a war breaks into the relationship of the heroes: their farewell at the station is depicted. The third row, generated by the situation of war, is now added to the opposition of the day and night world. The status of this series is contradictory: in some respects, it is opposed to the daytime world, but most does to the nighttime one. It is proved that in most cases the third row performs the function of a mediator (in the understanding of S. Levy-Strauss) between the worlds. The day and night worlds find reconciliation in the evening, tactile (bodily) and verbal (spiritual) codes are mediated in the form of a visible word. In the second part, the heroine pronounces the expected word “love”, and this pronunciation is akin to a ritual: it either inverts or reconciles the contradictions. However, not all components of the new series find a match in the previously installed system. In the work the impossibility of determining the place of war in the old structure of the world is interpreted as meaning-forming. It fixes the impossibility of inscribing war into the image of the world that dominated before.