Until I After — Summary

nerdchicken123Contemplative

Until I love I will After love I won't Finally Until I cry I will After I cry I won't Finally Until I'm angry I will After anger I won't Finally Until I die I will After death I won't Finally

Show the whole poemHide the poem

Learn Poems app

Try the Learn Poems app

Everything from the website trainer, and more: new exercises, voice recording and sharing, reminders, quick review.

Four short stanzas follow the same pattern, and each one treats a human experience as something with a beginning and an end. The speaker lists love, crying, anger, and finally death, and says the same thing about each: I will feel this until I stop, and then I won't. The structure is almost like a rule or a formula, repeated so steadily that the feelings start to seem interchangeable.

What the speaker feels is hard to pin down, and that's part of the effect. The tone is flat and matter-of-fact, as if they're accepting that nothing lasts. Love and anger are huge emotions, yet they get the same plain treatment as death. That can read as calm acceptance, or as numbness, or even a quiet weariness.

The word "Finally" closing every stanza adds a sense of release, but also of repeated endings. By the last stanza, death sits in the list like one more passing state. The mood is stark, quiet, and a little eerie.

Read also

More by nerdchicken123

All poems
Cheerfulnerdchicken123

Clouds

The solid mass of cloud Dip See the train Twisted around