After

by Robert Browning — a poem card from Justes Mots

A speaker confronts the death of someone who wronged them, grappling with whether death erases past offenses. The poem explores the paradox that death simultaneously validates a man's humanity while rendering vengeance meaningless. It serves those processing complex grief involving unresolved conflict.

Take the cloak from his face, and at first
Let the corpse do its worst!
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And, absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance, both strike
On his senses alike,…

Themes: sympathy · grief · reflection