There's another piece of prose I want
to read between those two books of poems
and the two books that followed.
This is a piece called "The Baptist Singers."
Each time the varnish of the carriage fills me
with a profound but unexpected delight such as rises
from the sudden recollection of something loved in childhood
and long forgotten.
The luster of the varnish is so deep
that it appears to have its own source of light, which
moves under the surface, approaches, fades, divides,
and comes together and disappears according
to a pleasure of its own.
The motions of the light bear witness
to something in the nature of the carriage
and to some appearances of the world that it passes.
But however closely they are watched,
their play looks as though it were independent of both.
And I realize each time, when it is too late,
that the motions of the light and the varnish have
so captivated me that I cannot say with any certainty what
color the varnish is.
I know it is dark.
Some opalescent shade scarcely distinguished
from black but not black.
And on the side of the carriage in an arc like a rainbows
are the words the singers in blue letters
edged with little flames of green and gold.
And under them is a painting of John
the Baptist standing thigh deep in the sky blue Jordan.
The horses are dark too but not black.
And their wine red harness and the carriage
itself stream with white ribbons tied in little bows.
In the carriage, the four singers
face each other: two women, one young and pale,
the other with a darker complexion and heavy features.
Both of them in the wide bonnets of another time.
Both of them in long gloves with which they hold
their stringed instruments.
They are riding backwards.
Across from them, a portly man in a tall hat and a ginger coat
and a boy in black velvet are sitting,
the boy holding a flute.
All four of them appear to be laughing merrily
at their own conversation.
Their heads nod, but nothing can be heard.
The footman raises the long coach horn, but if he blows it,
I cannot hear it.
The coachman and his dark coat drives on slowly,
and the carriage moves on as smoothly as a barge.
The blue wheels turn on the glassy surface of the road
where rain has just fallen.
The carriage glides along on its reflection, the blue wheels
spinning above and below making no mark where they touch.
And then very slowly, the wheels begin
to sink into their reflections.
The rims disappear.
The wheels above and below share a lost segment
that grows like the rising of an invisible sun.
And now the footman is surely blowing
his long, gleaming horn, but there is not
a sound to be heard as the carriage sinks into itself.
And the feet of John the Baptist meet, stand on each other,
and are washed away.
And the Jordan is swallowed up in the Jordan.
And the singers in the singers.
Only a piercing silence rises from both coach horns
and continues to echo long after they themselves
are out of sight.
[APPLAUSE]