This is a somewhat long poem, which
has blocks of prose and blocks of verse,
and the blocks of prose are not mine.
They're taken from the account by JM Itard, who
is an 18th century educator, and physician
of the Wild Boy of Aveyron.
This book is, I think, familiar to people who have
taken courses in education.
It seems to be used as a kind of classic.
And it is a classic, in a very real way.
Itard was-- took charge of a boy who
had been found, in the woods, in France,
who seemed to have grown up entirely among animals.
And he tried to civilize, to educate,
to humanize this wild child.
Truffaut made a film of that title, based on this book.
And he was doing this, of course,
according to the best rational principles of 18th century
France.
And his obsession was that, if he could just
teach this boy to speak, he would really
know that he had succeeded.
And he never did.
So the blocks of prose in this are
Itard speaking, describing his experiments,
his struggles, his observations of this child.
"One.
There was a profound indifference
to the objects of our pleasures and of our fictitious needs.
There were still so intense a passion
for the freedom of the fields that he would certainly
have escaped into the forest, had not
the most rigid precautions been taken.
In their own way, by their own lights
they tried to care for you, tried
to teach you to care for objects of their caring--
glossed oak planks, glass whirled in a fire
to impossible thinness.
To teach you names for things you did not need--
muslin shirt against the sun, linen on a sack of feathers,
locks, keys, boxes with coins inside.
They tried to make you feel the importance
of-- a piece of cowhide, sewn around a bundle of leaves,
impressed with signs.
To teach you language--
the thread their lives was strung on.
Two.
When considered from a more general and philosophic point
of view, these scars bear witness
against the feebleness and insufficiency of man
when left entirely to himself, and in favor
of the resources of nature which work openly
to repair and conserve that which she tends secretly
to impair and destroy.
I keep thinking about the lesson of the human ear which
stands for music, which stands for balance--
or the cat's ear which I can study better,
the whirls and ridges exposed.
It seems a hint dropped about the inside of the skull,
which I cannot see--
lobe, zone, that part of the brain, which is pure survival.
The most primitive part I go back into at night pushing
the leather and curtain with naked fingers,
then with naked body.
There, where every wound is registered as scar tissue.
A cave of scars.
Ancient archaic wallpaper built up, layer on layer,
from the earliest, dream-white to yesterday's,
a red-black scrawl.
A red mouth, slowly closing.
Go back so far, there is another language.
Go back far enough, the language is no longer personal.
These scars bear witness, but whether to repair
or to destruction, I no longer know.
Three.
It is true that there is visible on the throat
a very extended scar which might throw
some doubt upon the soundness of the underlying parts,
if one were not reassured by the appearance of the scar.
When I try to speak, my throat is cut and, it seems,
by his hand.
The sounds I make are prehuman, radical.
The telephone is always ripped out.
And he sleeps on, yet always the tissue
grows over, white as silk, hardly a blemish.
Maybe a hieroglyph for scream.
Child, no wonder you never wholly trusted your keepers.
Four.
A hand with the will, rather than the habit, of crime
had wished to make an attempt on the life of this child.
Left for dead in the woods, he will
have owed the prompt recovery of his wound to the help of nature
alone.
In the 18th century, infanticide reaches epidemic proportions.
Old prints attest to it--
starving mothers smothering babies in sleep,
abandoning newborns in sleet on the poor house steps,
gin-blurred setting fire to the room.
I keep thinking of the flights we
used to take on the grapevine, across the gully
littered with beer bottles, where dragonflies flashed.
We were 10, 11 years old--
wild little girls with boyish bodies, flying over the moist,
shadow-mottled earth till they warned
us to stay away from there.
Later, they pointed out the venetian blinds
of the abortionists house.
We shivered.
Men can do things to you, was all they said.
Five."
And this is the last paragraph of Itards book.
"And finally, my Lord, looking at this long experiment,
whether it be considered as the methodical education
of a savage, or as no more than the physical
and moral treatment of one of those creatures
ill favored by nature, rejected by society,
and abandoned by medicine, the care that has been taken
and ought still to be taken of him,
the changes that have taken place, and those
that can be hoped for, the voice of humanity,
the interest inspired by such a desertion
and a destiny so strange--
all these things recommend this extraordinary young man
to the attention of scientists, to the solicitude
of administrators, and to the protection of the government.
The doctor in Uncle Vanya--
they will call us fools, blind, ignorant.
They will despise us.
Devourers of the forest leaving teeth of metal in every tree,
so the tree can neither grow nor be cut for lumber.
Does the primeval forest weep for its devourers?
Does nature mourn our existence?
Is the child with arms burnt to the flesh of its sides
weeping eyelessly for man?
At the end of the distinguished doctor's lecture,
a young woman raises her hand.
You have the power in your hands, you control our lives--
why do you want our pity too?
Why are men afraid?
Why do you pity yourselves?
Why do the administrators lack solicitude, the government
refuse protection?
Why should the wild child weep for the scientists?
Why?"