Devika Brendon: ‘Expiation’

Expiation

We are not supposed to speak
ill, of the dead.
But that’s really the time to do it.
While the soul briefly
lingers, and reviews,
all the things done, and said.

We should blurt out the insults
and all the instances of tactlessness, and of their falling short:
the huge pain that their
brazen carelessness has wrought.

Let it not be glossed over
by simpering sentiment.
Lay it out, on the table:
side by side with
whatever good they did.
And let them rise above it.

Devika Brendon