I am doing an analysis(explication) on the song "The Dangling Conversation" by Simon and Garfunkel, and I am having trouble with line eight, "You can hear the ocean roar". Please help me.

1. It's a still life water color,
2. Of a now late afternoon,
3. As the sun shines through the curtained lace
4. And shadows wash the room.
5. And we sit and drink our coffee
6. Couched in our indifference,
7. Like shells upon the shore
8. You can hear the ocean roar
9. In the dangling conversation
10. And the superficial sighs,
11. Are the borders of our lives.

12. And you read your Emily Dickinson,
13. And I my Robert Frost,
14. And we note our place with bookmarkers
15. That measure what we've lost.
16. Like a poem poorly written
17. We are verses out of rhythm,
18. Couplets out of rhyme,
19. In syncopated time
20. Lost in the dangling conversation
21. And the superficial sighs,
22. Are the borders of our lives.

23. Yes, we speak of things that matter,
24. With words that must be said,
25. "Can analysis be worthwhile?"
26. "Is the theater really dead?"
27. And how the room is softly faded
28. And I only kiss your shadow,
29. I cannot feel your hand,
30. You're a stranger now unto me
31. Lost in the dangling conversation.
32. And the superficial sighs,
33. In the borders of our lives.

Thanks,
Chloe'

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-- William Carlos Williams

How about:- you can hear the indifference in the conversation just as you can hear the ocean in a shell.

Thank you, but i have gotten past that. How about lines 25 and 26? I am so lost; i have been working on this all day and I need to finish it tonight.

-chloe'

25. "Can analysis be worthwhile?"
26. "Is the theater really dead?"

Merely examples of academic questions.

[tinyurl.com]

>25. "Can analysis be worthwhile?"
>26. "Is the theater really dead?"

The types of chatter that would be part of a "dangling conversation".


Les