Revelation It is a translation, a faithless beauty—faithless to what is not in accord with the exigencies of a pure language.          —Paul Valéry   When Mrs. Middleton stopped singing and criedout, I turned to learn the cause and sawthat she had risen, her eyes skywardand wide and spilling tears. Then her body, as if locked in a dog’s jaws,shook, and she opened her mouth and pouredforth a flood of vowels, part canticle, part howl—such a burning current of weird words surging back to pure sound that my stunned ears drownedin the babble and I trembled in my pew.Terrified as I was, I remember thinking, even then,that…