‘Lady Lazarus’ By Sylvia Plath
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My face a featureless, fine
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The grave cave ate will be
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Them unwrap me hand and foot——
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
To last it out and not come back at all.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
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.
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
And there is a charge, a very large charge
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——