Sylvia Plath ( 1932 .1963 )

Lady Lazarus

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
0 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. ( in Poets from Academy of American Poets )

_________________________________________


biobibliografia

Sylvia Plath nasceu em Boston, EUA, em 1932. Teve uma passagem melancólica por Nova York, tentou o suicídio por mais de uma vez, casou em 1956 com o poeta inglês Ted Hughes, foi com ele para Cambridge, Inglaterra. Teve dois filhos. Descasou em 1962, escreveu seus poemas capitais, publicados postumamente no volume Ariel (1965), sua obra mais importante. Dois anos antes, em 1960, lançara o seu primeiro livro, Colossus.

Em 11 de fevereiro de 1963, Sylvia Plath aos 30 anos de idade cometia suicídio inspirando gás na cozinha de sua residência.

Obra

-The Colossus, 1960
-The Bell Jar, 1963
(pseudonym Victoria Lucas)
-Harper and Row, 1971
(edition apparently contains drawings by Plath and a Biographical Note by Lois Ames)
-Ariel, 1965
-Crossing the Water, 1971
-Winter Trees, 1971
-Letters Home:
Correspondence, 1950 - 1963
Ed. with commentary by Aurelia Schober Plath, 1975
-The Bed Book, 1976
-Johnny Panic and the
Bible of Dreams, 1977