This is one of my favorite poems of Emily Dickinson.
If there is a poem where the journey of finding yourself ends this might be it. It talks about the weightlessness of our self and the uselessness of our name, about how unimportant we all are in the grand scheme of things, about how important Guru Nanak's meditation, "koi naam na janai mera" -- "no one knows my name" is. The journey of finding the self ends here: in discovering that there is no self as we know it. The journey of the self ends with nobody. When you become dust you can join in the rest of the dust. Apart from acceptance as dust no other way is needed to save ourselves. Nobody needs no saving. Nobody needs no croaking.
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Update 2013: Sometimes I feel I should remove the biography and put this poem there. Or any of the Who am I poems I have been reading!
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