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    Lady Lazarus Poem

    Uploaded by

    Claudia Prates

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    Lady Lazarus Poem

    Uploaded by

    Claudia Prates
    94 views2 pages

    Original Title

    Lady Lazarus poem

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    94 views2 pages

    Lady Lazarus Poem

    Uploaded by

    Claudia Prates

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 2

    This is Number Three.

    Lady Lazarus What a trash


    By Sylvia Plath
    To annihilate each decade.

    I have done it again.


    What a million filaments.
    One year in every ten
    The peanut-crunching crowd
    I manage it——
    Shoves in to see

    A sort of walking miracle, my skin


    Them unwrap me hand and foot——
    Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
    The big strip tease.
    My right foot
    Gentlemen, ladies

    A paperweight,
    These are my hands
    My face a featureless, fine
    My knees.
    Jew linen.
    I may be skin and bone,

    Peel off the napkin


    Nevertheless, I am the same, identical
    O my enemy. woman.
    Do I terrify?—— The first time it happened I was ten.

    It was an accident.
    The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

    The sour breath The second time I meant


    Will vanish in a day. To last it out and not come back at all.

    I rocked shut
    Soon, soon the flesh

    The grave cave ate will be As a seashell.


    At home on me They had to call and call

    And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.


    And I a smiling woman.

    I am only thirty. Dying


    And like the cat I have nine times to die. Is an art, like everything else.

    I do it exceptionally well.
    The pure gold baby

    I do it so it feels like hell.

    I do it so it feels real. That melts to a shriek.

    I guess you could say I’ve a call. I turn and burn.

    Do not think I underestimate your great


    concern.
    It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.

    It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.


    Ash, ash—
    It’s the theatrical
    You poke and stir.

    Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——


    Comeback in broad day

    To the same place, the same face, the same


    brute A cake of soap,

    Amused shout: A wedding ring,

    A gold filling.

    ‘A miracle!’

    That knocks me out. Herr God, Herr Lucifer

    There is a charge Beware

    Beware.

    For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

    For the hearing of my heart—— Out of the ash

    It really goes. I rise with my red hair

    And I eat men like air.

    And there is a charge, a very large charge

    For a word or a touch Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus” from Collected


    Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971,
    Or a bit of blood
    1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial
    matter copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes.
    Used by permission of HarperCollins
    Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. Publishers.
    So, so, Herr Doktor. Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins
    So, Herr Enemy. Publishers Inc, 1992)

    I am your opus,

    I am your valuable,

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