There is a thing Bach does - after some chuntering, baskets creaking with veg, puffcheeks, rattle of keys, barter - far, thin, on the very edge of sound, a long note swelling 'til it fills all the dry air in the market, a tune makes itself up as it spills.
No benison rain, no God’s jacket round a plump opinion (though Bach of course was all in all religious: ‘Alas winter so mild,’ he wrote, ‘few calls upon me for any requiem mass’).
Others do the thing too, but this winter is Bach’s, who summersaults the whole world over to my irreligious bliss proving that revolution is practical.
This poem is from Mr Dick's Kite by Arnold Rattenbury (Shoestring Press, Nottingham, 2005).