Poor Lucy Falling To Pieces

How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.

Lucy Westenra, from her diary

There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part. Believe me, we are now on the verge of one. But I have not done. May I cut off the head of dead Miss Lucy?

Abraham Van Helsing, quoted in Dr. Seward’s diary

Poor Lucy. I was in a library today.
They were raising funds by selling old paperbacks.
I didn’t buy a “Dracula” for fifty cents.
The pages were desiccated, the binding cracked.
The story of Lucy was falling to pieces.

Young people who know her through Wikipedia
will think of her as false, a facade, believing
her role, “unrealistically idealized,”
a criticism that is never leveled at
the gun-toting, blood-transfusing, stake-pounding men.

This is a mystery I can only guess at,
I can only hope to possibly solve in part.
Poor Lucy has been staked. Beheaded. Had garlic
stuffed into her dead mouth. And now in books and films
she’s portrayed as a wanton, creature of the night.

When an age is defined by creatures of the night
those creatures see themselves in every other age.
Dracula transformed Lucy into a monster,
a copy of himself. The world changes her, too,
makes her a copy of itself. Like Dracula.

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Lucy Westenra, at Wikipedia



Saving Lucy