To hear what sirens was Jesus Christ
nailed to a tree, unable to move?
To what treacherous love
was the world near?
The ears of all its other crew required no wax
to seal them to that singing
only his to hear.

This article appears in Fall Literary Review 2021.

Ilya Bernstein is a poet and translator. His recent publications include a book-length poem, Distances and Sounds (Ars-Interpres, 2020), and a collection of poems by Osip Mandelstam in translation (M-Graphics, 2020).