Electra Movie Camera image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA
The Vampire’s Lament: Cantos I-VI
by Cosmic Poet Simon Pole
I
In a tomb, two vampires met,
Where the soil and walls were wet,
And crept worms through the dark,
Without lamp or flutting spark,
Except a patch where pure light
In beams fell from greater heights.
This spot they shunned as they spoke,
And on rot and foul air choked,
Skin as pallid as white bugs,
Who in caves their homes have dug,
Though ruby red were their lips,
And hair jet black to the tips.
II
One was old, the other young,
Who perhaps in bars had sung
The latest songs, acts of youth,
Shared in company uncouth,
But in that time had learned much
Of the ways of man and such,
How he lived and how he loved,
Why he praised a God above,
How he was in terror born,
From his mother’s bosom shorn,
Why he would with wine-drenched sigh
Lament the truth he must die.
III
Thus much wiser he returned,
To the cradle he had spurned,
When he had with youthful cheek
Scampered off to wisdom seek,
And his pa found much the same,
By the mold and mildew framed,
In a stout and ancient chair,
Musing with a cryptic stare
Into the dark, with such thoughts
That are by aloneness bought.
Yet with care he welcomed home
The wayward son who had roamed.
IV
“Sit my son,” he gravely said,
“Here among the restless dead,
In this crypt, so far below
Sun-lit fields where once were sowed
Crops of daisies, brilliant seas
Patronized by cheerful bees—
All that peace at once was dashed,
When a Count his heart-soul cashed
To exchange for living death,
To exist, but without breath;
And so we meet, of him heirs,
Of his flesh, and in his lair.”
V
Full of venom was the glare,
A reproachful, hostile stare,
Which at his pa he directs,
The son with his stress-clenched neck,
Who inside a burden bears;
Knowledge with its flicker-flare
Burns in his eyes, hooded, black,
And by anguish equal wracked;
Close to crying also he,
With the scars of misery:
All these echoes in him whirl,
As his lip to dispute curls.
VI
“I’ve come at last!” spits the son,
“All my travels now are done:
Far from this blighted hollow
Of the earth, where fiends wallow.
On my journey hard I tried
To not be as one who died,
And embrace the scalding light,
Where the living forge and fight
Their feeble lives, but with joy—
Them who were to us as toys.
Free I found them, weak but wise,
Unensnared by our bleak lies.”