The Vampire
Delmira Agustini
In the sad lap of evening light
I summoned your pain… to feel it was
to feel your heart itself. You turned pale
even in voice, your eyelids like wax.
They fell… and you fell silent… You seemed
to hear death passing… I, who opened
your wound, bit into it—did you feel me?—
as one would bite into the gold of a honeycomb.
And I pressed out more, traitorously, gently,
your heart, mortally wounded;
through the cruel dagger, strange and exquisite,
of a nameless evil, until it bled into tears.
And the thousand mouths of my cursed thirst
I turned toward that open spring in your grief.
Why was I your vampire of bitterness?
Am I flower, or lineage of a darker kind
that feeds on wounds and drinks on sorrow?
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