Lady Lazarus in the Bath

I have done it again.
One week in every seven
I ruin it.

Bones in the basin
And the sodden skin
Above it; I roll

On a beaded spine
And stain the fever liquid
With my rust.

The water in the
Curtain's shadow--
Once faucet-sweet--

Now might be the ocean's.
I leave my poppy-petal
Pigment in the tub.

These are my roots
My lashes now.
I may be tarnished silver;

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was scared.
It was an accident.

Now in voluntary
Madness I submerge,
Then, dripping my undoing, stand:

Out of the water
I rise with my wet hair
And only ashes to wear.





original poem here.
photograph by Pennie Naylor.

From the Journals of Sylvia Plath

I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.





Still nothing. I don't know where it's gone.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Lorelei

It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.



Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963)
illustration by Arthur Rackham

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly ----

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.



Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 - February 11, 1963)
photograph by flickr user scheithelapeyre

Heptonstall

Sylvia Plath, pale patron saint
of all this rising sadness, I must know
that this is the last life,
this unrepentant madness.

In Heptonstall the chalky door
of your smallest and final cocoon
bears the scars of the nails of virgins,
the glittery spots of dried-tear moons.

Someone has left you sugary sweet peas,
wrapped in thin pink paper. I hope
they did not wake you. I hope
there is no waking.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

The Arrival of the Bee Box
I ordered this, clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.

I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.

How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.

They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.

-Sylvia Plath


photograph by Chris Lopez