Il piccolo Hans - anno IX - n. 33 - gennaio-marzo 1982

Faber and Faber, London 1965. Traduzione italiana di Giovanni Giu­ dici da Sylvia Plath: Lady Lazarus e altre poesie, Mondadori 1976. 112 The tulips are too excitable, it is winter bere. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I bave nothing to do with explosions. I bave given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons. They bave propped my head between the pillow and the sheet- cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupi!, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tel1 how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I bave lost myself I am sick of baggage. My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I bave let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They bave swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my tea-set, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I bave never been so pure. I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands tumed up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you bave no idea how free - The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. lt is what the dead dose on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could bear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,