O, Responsibility

On one side,
irretrievable spires and cobbles,
ladders, arpeggios,  
boletes, apples, oysters, 
lists and languages lost under sand.

On the other, 
what can be wrestled with still, 
reconnoitered, 
returned to, repaired. 

O, responsibility! 
Tied to the feast of your stanchion 
like a tired donkey.

With commensurate ears
one could hear the old music in you—

some June-singing thrush

or distant, 
one-stringed instrument, 
made of maple wood, rabbit skin, horse hair—

neither separate from nor completing the cries of the famished.