Summary

The speaker describes how a woman in her community used to remove her clothes and give an opera concert at nighttime gatherings by the sea. As the night wore on and the group drank wine, the opera singer would disrobe, step into the water, and begin to give her concert. Everyone listened with rapture.

The speaker expresses her desire to feel such a degree of comfort in her own skin. The doors of pleasure opened, allowing for transcendence as the singer waded deeper into the water. Despite the speaker's young age, she heard the true meaning in the woman's song, which was not in fact a hymn of promise. Rather, this was an expression against the constraints of the human body. In the final lines, the speaker compares this longing for freedom to the way a bird hurls itself against the stained glass windows...