Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? - meaning Summary
Desire Unmet in Night
The speaker lies awake, longing for an intimate, musical response from a beloved whose touch and breath once animated her. Night and city sounds surround her, but their noise only heightens the absence of the lover's song. Memory registers past harmonies while the present offers silence, leaving the speaker suspended between desire and unfulfilled expectation. The repeated question to the titular addressee underscores yearning and unresolved emotional distance.
Read Complete AnalysesEvicted from sleep's mute palace, I wait in silence for the bridal croon; your legs rubbing insistent rhythm against my thighs, your breath moaning a canticle in my hair. But the solemn moments, unuttering, pass in unaccompanied procession. You, whose chanteys hummed my life alive, have withdrawn your music and lean inaudibly on the quiet slope of memory. O Shaker, why don't you sing? In the night noisy with street cries and the triumph of amorous insects, I focus beyond those cacophonies for the anthem of your hands and swelling chest, for the perfect harmonies which are your lips. Yet darkness brings no syncopated promise. I rest somewhere between the unsung notes of night. Shaker, why don't you sing?
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