In Praise of the Vampire
Elogio del vampiro (de El ángel es vampiro, 1991)
By Vicente Quirarte. Translated by Ernesto Priego.
Why pursue them,
stab them with a wooden stake,
condemn their appetite beforehand,
lament their presence in our lives?
Unless we open the window,
the Vampire cannot enter.
Listen to their song,
not only from the moor or forest:
in the turquoise waters of the tropics,
in hotel rooms,
among the market’s parrot cloth,
wherever anyone recognises
the gleam of another body and needs
the Vampire’s ivory at their throat.
The Vampire is innocent:
we call them cruel when they wound us,
and invoke God when our blood conjures the flood
and sets the furniture adrift,
despite the laws of Newton.
The Vampire is so beautiful
that quicksilver refuses to reflect them.
If their shadow reaches you,
mirrors will forget your name,
but you will find an echo in the beauty
of the one you have chosen as your double.
They would like to love the light, but also know
that love has a taste of hunted shadow,
of the final daze of the hanged,
of everything that ends in rapture.
Open your window for them.
When you taste their wine,
you will feel your life getting extended,
and the water in his goblets made of glass.
Accept their lies:
you will never feel more alive than in their arms.
*
And never blame them for leaving you.
They bit you because they are beasts,
and their thirst is the thirst of the vanquished sea
that soothes its rage with shipwrecks;
their passion, that of a child, betrayed,
because the kingdom has been lost.
Do not dwell on them saying ‘forever’:
the storm leaves no tree unharmed
nor turns its blows into a caress.
If it makes you feel better, vampires
love only the strong and the mad,
but nothing holds them.
You will say that never more, that you no longer want it.
The Vampire is an exquisite vice
and will wait, patiently, for your return.
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