51/112: Glassily

[rejectomorph]

The mundane is driving even the routine out of my head. Sleeping all night again Saturday, then waking up to the end of darkness Sunday morning, and then another entire day when I got nothing done and promptly forgot. I remember once seeing an ad for pork products that said "We use everything but the squeal." Whatever devours me will probably use everything but the sadness. I'm pretty sure that sadness is immortal.




Sunday Verse

The Undead

by Richard Wilbur

   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; 

   From the stretched arms of withered trees 
They turned, fearing contagion of the mortal, 
   And even under the plums of summer 
      Drifted like winter moons. 

   Secret, unfriendly, pale, possessed 
Of the one wish, the thirst for mere survival, 
   They came, as all extremists do 
      In time, to a sort of grandeur: 

   Now, to their Balkan battlements 
Above the vulgar town of their first lives, 
   They rise at the moon's rising. 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. 

   Into the pallid night emerging, 
Wrapped in their flapping capes, routinely maddened 
   By a wolf's cry, they stand for a moment 
      Stoking the mind's eye 

   With lewd thoughts of the pressed flowers 
And bric-a-brac of rooms with something to lose, - 
   Of love-dismembered dolls, and children 
      Buried in quilted sleep. 

   Then they are off in a negative frenzy, 
Their black shapes cropped into sudden bats 
   That swarm, burst, and are gone. Thinking 
      Of a thrush cold in the leaves 

   Who has sung his few summers truly, 
Or an old scholar resting his eyes at last, 
   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.