A song Which I shall never sing Has fallen asleep on my lips. A song Which I shall never sing--
Above the honeysuckle There's a firefly And the moon stings With a ray into the water--
At that time I'll imagine The song Which I shall never sing.
A song full of lips And far-off washes
A song full of lost Hours in the shadow
A song of a star that's alive Above enduring day.
Spicer's speaker is holding a song he knows he will never actually sing. It has already "fallen asleep" on his lips, a lovely, tender way of saying that something he almost expressed has quietly gone still. The opening line repeats, as if he keeps circling back to the same small loss.
Then the poem shifts to the outdoors: a firefly above honeysuckle, the moon stinging the water with a single ray. These images are delicate and a little painful at once, and they seem to be what the unsung song is made of. In the closing stanzas he promises to imagine the song instead, and describes it through fragments: lips, distant washes of water, lost hours in shadow, a living star. The mood is hushed, wistful, and oddly consoling. The song can't be sung, but picturing it turns out to be its own kind of music.