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, O my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

Yes, yes, herr professor, it is I...
Can you denay the nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath, I will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh, the grave cave ate will be at home on me…
And I am 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.