My Beauty, Do Not Sing for Me
My Beauty, Do Not Sing for Me - meaning Summary
Longing Triggered by Music
The speaker asks a beloved to stop singing Georgian songs because the melodies summon involuntary memories of another life and distant shores. The music repeatedly restores a mournful, vivid scene — a moonlit steppe and a solitary virgin — that the speaker might otherwise forget while in the beloved’s presence. The poem explores how song can unexpectedly reopen longing and displacement tied to landscape and loss.
Read Complete AnalysesMy beauty, do not sing for me The songs of Georgia, of grievance: My thoughts immediately flee To another life and shores in distance. They bring to me -- your cruel tunes -- Alas, the sad and clear vision: The steppe, the night -- under the moon, The poor and very distant virgin. While seeing you, I could forget The image so sad and fair, But, look, you sing -- and it is set Again before my eyes in air. My beauty, do not sing for me The songs of Georgia, of grievance: My thoughts immediately flee To another life and shores in distance. Translated by Yevgeny Bonver
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