The boatman’s basso barcarola brings
a sudden, somewhat deeper blush upon
our evening waterway. With a roseate
glow afloat on their canal, the little boats
attend our slackened afternoon. And look
how each adjacent villa also bears
a rosy glow. For a moment, I don’t
know where I am—or, briefly, I forget—
which mercy proves to be relatively
fleeting, as, in time, I find my wits and,
with them, I find my bearings bearing down.
Where did I begin? How did my late trek
commence? It must have been with my waking
late, thereafter staggering downstairs
to a nearly eucharistic caffé
e panino. Just so, the languishing
spirit is summoned back to life, called back
to what might pass for life, a passing life,
and quite passable should you care to know.
The boatman is patently on to me, but keeps
the pathos of his song intact, in time
with our slowly rocking progress, which may
as well become a late, dimming—one might
say an evening—retreat. So it may.
In my Eastern church, the vespers often
can acquire, in their language and their tone,
a deep sense of lament, an all but Lenten
sadness accompanied by a subtle,
latent joy—a modest joy attending
to the promise of our consolation
biding in the nous, where one might yet obtain
an uncommon calm, unassailable.
The boatman’s barcarola acquiesces
to an unsurprising coda holding
yet some repetition of the theme. Time
itself has slowed and stilled, has filled the air
with space, with peace, a rising expectation.
I love this poem, Scott.