Even as children they were late sleepers,
Preferring their dreams, even when quick with monsters,
To the world with all its breakable toys,
Its compacts with the dying;
So begins “The Undead”, a haunting poem by Richard Wilbur that grew out of the poet’s love for classic horror movies, especially the 1931 film version of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi.
But the poem is more profound than the movie. With his poet’s insight, Wilbur finds vampires to be paradoxical and pitiful rather than frightening:
Strange
That their utter self-concern
Should, in the end, have left them selfless;
Mirrors fail to perceive them as they float
Through the great hall and up the staircase;
Nor are the cobwebs broken.
In the end, Wilbur concludes:
We cannot be much impressed with vampires,
Colorful though they are;
Nevertheless, their pain is real,
And requires our pity. Think how sad it must be
To thirst always for a scorned elixir,
The salt quotidian blood
Which, if mistrusted, has no savor;
To prey on life forever and not possess it,
As rock-hollows, tide after tide,
Glassily strand the sea.
The next time I watch Bela Lugosi lodge his famous protest, “I neffer drink … wine”, I don’t think I’ll find it quite as funny. Vampires desperately seek immortality, but what they end up with is a half-life that is as pale and flickering as their celluloid impersonators in the movies.
Happy Halloween.
