The Graveyard Has Shut Me Out Poem by Deepa Agarwal

I cannot be laid to rest
like Rilke
in the earth I have chosen
for my own burial.
That much is certain, for
the graveyard has shut me out.
Not for me the dreamless sleep
beneath benign deodar trees, which stretch
tireless arms, sifting
sunshine and rain.
Not for me the granite gravestone
preserving my name,
modest cenotaph
an idle stranger might wonder at,
the way I have mused over Sarah Elizabeth
and Baby Mickey.
Sure I will become dust and ashes too,
but nameless dust flung far from the walls
of a beloved graveyard,
walls that shut me out
growing higher
each time I attempt the leap.

2003