The Art of Dying

The Treegap Governess is tired today and unlike most Friday nights, I welcome the thick cloud masses that have layered themselves across the sky over the course of the day and I hope it’s raining when I wake up. The matted assemblage of nebula and rain mean a nice sleep in and lay about, an excuse to be lazy. But it also reminds me of where I grew up and the days I lived in Ireland where all you needed was a good cup of tea and a book and you were content to live indoors and listen to the soft spattering of hydration leaking down from above.

Today’s poem is a reminder of just such a day and suits my mood. When I lived in Dublin there was one bookstore open downtown on the weekends where they encouraged sitting and reading their books for free. It is there, in 1998 that I read Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” for the first time. I didn’t buy it, but read it in three installments and on a pad of notebook paper wrote down all of my favorite lines or passages. Plath was an interesting soul and I wish she had lived longer to know more of the intricacies of her mind. This is my favorite Plath poem because if you’re going to love a Plath poem, you’ve got to go full Plath, beautiful and blue, tortured to the core. The writing here is truly amazing but also gut wrenching, and somehow, by the end, empowering.

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?----

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.