i have done it again.

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 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 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.



Lady Lazarus is a dramatic, suicidal, and very controversial poem due to plath's use of nazi/holocaust symbolism. however, after listening to one of her interviews, she explained how she found the use of historical references to be compelling when sharing personal information. many have found her references of the holocaust, in her poetry, a gross and egregious abuse to those who were tortured to a level of imcomprehension.

here, i have trouble coming to a personal conclusion because i love plath's ability to candidly and without inhibition demonstrate her feelings of herself, others current emotional station. although, she suffered from crippling depression and did, ultimately, kill herself i find her use of genocidal techniques somehow fitting unto her mental state.

the holocaust was a time of persecution: loss of family, dignity, humanity, and physical abuse. having said this, psychologically speaking severe depression is also an attack on both the mind and body. a tortured soul undergoes many different phases while the psyche can take only so much before one may begin to self-medicate, self-harm, or even take on suicidal ideation. still, it is hard to defend the use of something so enormous as genocide to compare one, individual's struggle against the demon of depression.

What do you think?