A CHORALE Poem by Rutger Kopland

According to his contemporaries Johann Sebastian Bach was
a virtuoso organist - he played with
an inimitable ‘Leichtigkeit'

light-handedness you could call this, but then so
light that it seemed as if it weren't hands
that were playing

I think I know how it sounded
as if I can hear it's the man himself
up there in this church in his tiny engine room
making music

you can hear the age-old mechanism, the groaning
of hinges, the clatter of keys
the floor creaking, the wind sighing
how music is made out of air

and a chorale slowly floats through this space
as an invisible weightless bird
Leichtigkeit