Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath (1932 –1963)

 
I have done it again.
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
A paperweight,
Peel off the napkin

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
Soon, soon the flesh
And I a smiling woman.
This is Number Three.

What a million filaments.
Them unwrap me hand and foot—
These are my hands
My knees.
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
That knocks me out.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
I am your opus,
That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate
your great concern.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.