| Lady Lazarus | Requires . |
This powerful reading was recorded for the British Council only days after the poem was written and is slightly longer than the version published posthumously in the collection 'Ariel'.
I have done it again.
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
A paperweight,
Peel off the napkin
Yes, yes Herr Professor
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
Soon, soon the flesh
And I a smiling woman.
This is Number Three.
What a million filaments.
Them unwrap me hand and foot-----
These are my hands
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The second time I meant
As a seashell.
Dying
I do it so it feels like hell.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
Comeback in broad day
'A miracle!'
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
And there is a charge, a very large charge
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
I am your opus,
That melts to a shriek.
Ash, ash--
A cake of soap,
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Out of the ash
One year in every ten
I manage it-----
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-----
It is I.
Can you deny
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
My knees.
I may be skin and bone, I may be Japanese,
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
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 real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
That knocks me out.
There is a charge.
For the hearing of my heart-----
It really goes.
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-----
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Beware
Beware.
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Reproduced from "Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath" by permission of Faber & Faber on behalf of the Sylvia Plath estate.
