Osip Mandelshtam
Bach

The parishioners are children of dust,
no icons here but the boards
where the psalms of Johann Sebastian
are nothing but numbers in chalk.

What clashing voices reside
in disorderly pubs and cathedrals,
but Bach, you exult like Isaiah:
nobody trumps you in reason.

High-level squabbler, I guess
you found the mind good handrails
by holding hard to the evidence
when you played your grandkids chorales.

And sound? Old man, you’re stubborn,
and none of those sixteenth portions
are anything more than your grumbling
in the polysyllabic organ.

Now, the Lutheran preacher
ascends to his pulpit’s blackness
and mingles the din of his speeches
with yours, that would answer in anger.

Translated by Alistair Noon