What a great responsibility, and: Here

Abstract

What a great responsibility, and: Here Mark Irwin (bio) What a great responsibility What a great responsibility to think of things that no longer exist—the tree housewith ladder struck by lightning. The skyscraper whose floors and ceilings collapsed as people dined abovewhile below computer terminals and desks flew out the windows. What a great responsibility to think of creatures no longer here.The Tasmanian tiger hunted to extinction, or the golden toad that burrowedin the high cloud forests of Costa Rica. What a great responsibility to speak of people no longer here. The hummingof blood, muscle, bone, and skin—of ghost bodies and namesstill haunting windows and doors. What a great responsibility to give human form to words, to place safety conesaround parts of speech, especially nouns and verbs in the pastwhere work will never cease. What a great responsibility to know that each “I” on the page leans toward the horizonwhile the living lie down with the dead. What a great responsibility to speak of things and people. This boy pullingon his father’s work-gloves, or that kid in April, dragging an old violinthrough loose soil till the pear trees bud and then flower in an instant. [End Page 82] Here This world with its dollars and smart phones, this world with itscumuli and muons. This world with its coupons and pop-up ads—someone always trying to argue somethinglike a crow in a lemon tree. In grade school we used to answer Here when roll was called. What it meant thenseems so much less than now, here with Mom at the nursing home, here with the surgeon cutting the melanomafrom my cheek, here with the homeless vet and his just-rescued greyhound, the intaglio ribs of both glowingin sunlight. Here’s a burrito, I say. Here, the word like a shiny plough blade pulled by a horsetoo far away to see. I remember water, green and high, and the swarm of bees in an alder’s branch I cut, tossedin the pickup, then drove to my hives. Here, I said, their brief diaspora over, the queen far in the brood chamber’sdark. Here, I say, six months later to a neighbor, smearing their honey on bread, and here reader, their muted hum like that river’sthrough the just-now sense of these words. [End Page 83] Mark Irwin Mark Irwin’s nine collections of poetry include A Passion According to Green (New Issues, 2017), American Urn: New & Selected Poems (1987–2014) (Ashland Poetry Press, 2015), Tall If (New Issues, 2009), and Bright Hunger (BOA Editions, 2004). He is the recipient of many awards for his poetry, including the Philip Levine Prize for his tenth book, Shimmer (Anhinga Press, 2020). Copyright © 2019 Middlebury College Publications