In the image of the beekeeper, the English poet Charles Tomlinson beautifully suggests the relation of Bach’s art, and by implication music itself, to the laws of nature.

If Bach had been a beekeeper
by Charles Tomlinson

If Bach had been a beekeeper
he would have heard
all those notes
suspended above one another
in the air of his ear
as the differentiated swarm returning
to the exact hive
and place in the hive,
topping up the cells
with the honey of C major,
food for the listening generations,
key to their comfort
and solace of their distress
as they return and return
to those counterpointed levels
of hovering wings where
movement is dance
and the air itself
a scented garden

The great Spanish poet Antonio Machado, in Jamie McKendrick’s graceful translation, gives us the hope of regeneration and ever-burgeoning life.

To a Dried-Up Elm
Antonio Machado
Translated by Jamie McKendrick

After the rains of April and the suns of May,
the old, blasted elm,
half eaten away,
has just put forth a few green leaves.

The century-old elm up on the hill
past which the Duero flows! Dull
yellow moss badges the whitened bark
on its dusty, carious trunk.

Unlike the song-filled poplars
lining the road and the riverbank,
it won’t be the home of nightingales.

Dauntless ants in single file
make their ascent, and in its entrails
spiders drape their drab, grey webs.

Before you fall, elm of the Duero,
to the woodman’s axe and the carpenter
planes you down for a church bell’s brace,
a carriage axle or the yoke of a cart;
before you redden, tomorrow, in the grate
of some forlorn abode
huddled beside the country road;
before you’re torn up by a dust devil
or felled by a gust from the white sierras;
before the river takes you, elm, to the sea
hurtling through valleys and ravines,
I want to preserve, here in my notebook,
the sudden grace of your green-clad branch.
Turned to the light, to the life it might bring,
my heart as much as yours awaits
another miracle of Spring.