The lyrics concern a carnival worker who vanished, highlighted in the words "No one saw the Carny go". As the circus prepares to leave without the missing performer, they find the Carny's horse Sorrow, "so skin and bone", and kill it. The dwarfs Moses and Noah dig a ditch to bury it, later remarking "we should've dug a deeper one". When it begins to rain, the Carny's caravan is swept away.[1]
The song is featured in Wim Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire, when the character Marion (Solveig Dommartin) listens to the album Your Funeral, My Trial. The song corresponds to the plot, in which the circus that Marion works for as a trapeze artist closes down.[1] Professor Adrian Danks wrote "The Carny" adds a feel of sorrow in the background, while Marion gives "breathy accompaniment".[2] Cave personally appears in the film in later scenes.[3]
^ abDavison, Annette (2017). "Music to Desire By: The Soundtrack to Wim Wenders's Der Himmel über Berlin". "Hollywood Theory, Non-Hollywood Practice ": Cinema Soundtracks in the 1980s and 1990s. Routledge. ISBN978-1351563581.
^Danks, Adrian (2016). "Red Right Hand: Nick Cave and the Cinema". Cultural Seeds: Essays on the Work of Nick Cave. London and New York: Routledge. p. 114. ISBN978-1317156253.
^Billingham, Peter (2013). "'Into My Arms': Themes of Desire and Spirituality in The Boatman's Call". The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect Books. p. 13. ISBN978-1841506272.
