"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms



"Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may touch one another, again bounce away. This is the felt shape of a human life, neither simply linear nor wholly disjunctive nor endlessly bifurcating, but rather this bouncey sequence of bumping into's and tumblings apart."
~ Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet



Thursday, September 20, 2012

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath…

 
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 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 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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