in progress on the page before us. Moreover, not only does the Song end without closure, it begins in medias res, “let him kiss me”—a design that makes the Song, in effect, a poem without beginning or end. Like the love it celebrates, the Song of Songs strives to be ongoing, never-ending (cf. Fox 226; Munro 89). The last verse, because it signals both the lovers’ separation and their union, suspends their love in time. As an analogy, we might consider the activity captured in time on a Grecian urn,