416
W.S.
MERWIN
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
dis–
appear. 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.
