Sestina Day 29: Dead Girl

I did say that, today, I’d try to write a sestina with things like baby lambs and ducklings and springtime (and, crucially, less death) in it. But then I was lured by the NaPoWriMo prompt to write a poem that mirrors  a poem I admire.

Now, obviously I had to pick a sestina, and the sestina that taught me the form – and is a poem which I love in its own right – is Neil Gaiman’s Vampire Sestina. To understand what my sestina is going on about, click the link. Or better still, get hold of a copy of Smoke and Mirrors or The Mammoth Book Of Vampires, both of which contain it.

So, the mirror of Vampire Sestina wasn’t going to be cheerful and springlike. Well, it could have been. I suppose I could have written a total opposite poem, about a wholesome and lively young man waiting happily and hopefully to meet his girlfriend for a day in the sunshine, looking at baby lambs and ducklings…

I didn’t do that. Sorry.

I’m not going to try and describe Gaiman as a writer. I can’t do him justice. If you know, you know.

I wait here in my neverending dream,
Coffin-encased, I cannot taste the night,
So cold and crisp, but I can hear my love:
His footsteps, back and forth across my stone.
He’s come to bring me back into the world
To wake in me a thirst for human blood.

He seems so lonely in his quest for blood,
For, as he drank my life, I felt him dream.
I saw into his solitary world.
The moonlight will not kiss my skin tonight.
I lie in darkness, cold and still as stone:
Undead, my lover . . . O, undead my love?

I dreamt before you came, of life and love
Of husband, children, happiness. Not blood.
Of sunlight shining on a pretty stone
Set in a wedding ring – a schoolgirl’s dream –
And then you came, as dark and cool as night

Gently, you forced me from the living world.

For only sixteen years I walked the world.
Until you came, I’d never been in love
You stole one kiss, and woke me to the night.
And to the savage joy of tasting blood.
And come the morning I began to dream:
Cold body chilling underneath a stone.

You said you would not hurt me. Cold as stone,
You took me as your prey, showed me your world
So different from my childish little dreams.
At once I longed to offer you my love.
You told me, after you had sucked my blood,
How much I’d love to fly with you at night.

At first I meant to rise and walk the night.
With you, but as I lie beneath my stone
I know I’ll never have a taste for blood.
I had my sixteen years upon the world.
And as I rot to maggots, O my love
I’ll taste your hungry kisses in my dream.

You’ll wait next to my stone for me tonight
But never will I dream of drinking blood.
Good night, my love. I must refuse your world.