To Nancy by Jagari Mukherjee

I used to sit by your marble resting place

Trying to read books and make notes on

The Romantics. Our university garden

Bore your name…for there 

Lay you in your lonely white grave.

The tombstone said you died

Of an illness more than

A hundred and fifty years ago

But legend has it that you hanged

Yourself from the tree that now 

Stands next to your grave because you

Loved a lowly servant and 

Your high-born father disapproved.

You were only twenty-seven and beautiful.

They say you can be seen still

Dressed in white, riding a white horse

All around the garden throughout the night.

You are a shimmering white light among

Heavy-branched trees. Even the stray dogs

Fall silent when you appear and the 

Grasshoppers cannot be heard.

The moon becomes dim compared

To your light, and you become the moon

On new moon nights. Nobody comes

To put flowers on your grave because

Everyone you knew is dead.

But wild roses somehow bloom

Next to your tomb anyway.

I left the city many years ago.

But Nancy, I miss you still.

Jagari Mukherjee is a bilingual poet from Kolkata, India. She is a gold medalist in English Literature from University of Pune. Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in journals like Plum Tree Tavern, Scarlet Leaf Review, Labyrinthine Passages, Duane’s PoeTree, Vox Poetica, Setu, Margutte, Tuck Magazine, and others.