Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

Love her imagery, it’s so evocative.

I have done it again.
   One year in every ten
   I manage it----

   A sort of walking miracle, my skin
   Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
   My right foot

   A paperweight,
   My face a featureless, fine
   Jew linen.

   Peel off the napkin
   0 my enemy.
   Do I terrify?----

   The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
   The sour breath
   Will vanish in a day.

   Soon, soon the flesh
   The grave cave ate will be
   At home on me

   And I a smiling woman.
   I am only thirty.
   And like the cat I have nine times to die.

   This is Number Three.
   What a trash
   To annihilate each decade.

   What a million filaments.
   The peanut-crunching crowd
   Shoves in to see

   Them unwrap me hand and foot
   The big strip tease.
   Gentlemen, ladies

   These are my hands
   My knees.
   I may be skin and bone,

   Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
   The first time it happened I was ten.
   It was an accident.

   The second time I meant
   To last it out and not come back at all.
   I rocked shut

   As a seashell.
   They had to call and call
   And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

   Dying
   Is an art, like everything else,
   I do it exceptionally well.

   I do it so it feels like hell.
   I do it so it feels real.
   I guess you could say I've a call.

   It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
   It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
   It's the theatrical

   Comeback in broad day
   To the same place, the same face, the same brute
   Amused shout:

   'A miracle!'
   That knocks me out.
   There is a charge

   For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
   For the hearing of my heart----
   It really goes.

   And there is a charge, a very large charge
   For a word or a touch
   Or a bit of blood

   Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
   So, so, Herr Doktor.
   So, Herr Enemy.

   I am your opus,
   I am your valuable,
   The pure gold baby

   That melts to a shriek.
   I turn and burn.
   Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

   Ash, ash ---
   You poke and stir.
   Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

   A cake of soap,
   A wedding ring,
   A gold filling.

   Herr God, Herr Lucifer
   Beware
   Beware.

   Out of the ash
   I rise with my red hair
   And I eat men like air.

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