Chapter 9: nine
Lady Lazarus
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
O 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 a 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
They 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 it
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
Come back 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 the scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.
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 red hair
And eat men like air.
by Sylvia Plath
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