WEBVTT

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This is a somewhat
long poem, which

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has blocks of prose
and blocks of verse,

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and the blocks of
prose are not mine.

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They're taken from the
account by JM Itard, who

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is an 18th century
educator, and physician

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of the Wild Boy of Aveyron.

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This book is, I think,
familiar to people who have

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taken courses in education.

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It seems to be used
as a kind of classic.

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And it is a classic,
in a very real way.

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Itard was-- took
charge of a boy who

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had been found, in
the woods, in France,

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who seemed to have grown
up entirely among animals.

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And he tried to
civilize, to educate,

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to humanize this wild child.

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Truffaut made a film of that
title, based on this book.

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And he was doing
this, of course,

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according to the best rational
principles of 18th century

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France.

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And his obsession was
that, if he could just

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teach this boy to
speak, he would really

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know that he had succeeded.

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And he never did.

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So the blocks of
prose in this are

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Itard speaking, describing
his experiments,

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his struggles, his
observations of this child.

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"One.

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There was a profound
indifference

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to the objects of our pleasures
and of our fictitious needs.

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There were still so
intense a passion

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for the freedom of the fields
that he would certainly

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have escaped into
the forest, had not

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the most rigid
precautions been taken.

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In their own way,
by their own lights

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they tried to care
for you, tried

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to teach you to care for
objects of their caring--

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glossed oak planks,
glass whirled in a fire

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to impossible thinness.

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To teach you names for
things you did not need--

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muslin shirt against the sun,
linen on a sack of feathers,

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locks, keys, boxes
with coins inside.

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They tried to make you
feel the importance

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of-- a piece of cowhide, sewn
around a bundle of leaves,

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impressed with signs.

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To teach you language--

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the thread their
lives was strung on.

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Two.

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When considered from a more
general and philosophic point

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of view, these
scars bear witness

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against the feebleness
and insufficiency of man

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when left entirely to
himself, and in favor

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of the resources of
nature which work openly

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to repair and conserve that
which she tends secretly

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to impair and destroy.

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I keep thinking about the
lesson of the human ear which

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stands for music, which
stands for balance--

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or the cat's ear which
I can study better,

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the whirls and ridges exposed.

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It seems a hint dropped about
the inside of the skull,

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which I cannot see--

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lobe, zone, that part of the
brain, which is pure survival.

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The most primitive part I go
back into at night pushing

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the leather and curtain
with naked fingers,

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then with naked body.

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There, where every wound is
registered as scar tissue.

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A cave of scars.

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Ancient archaic wallpaper
built up, layer on layer,

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from the earliest,
dream-white to yesterday's,

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a red-black scrawl.

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A red mouth, slowly closing.

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Go back so far, there
is another language.

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Go back far enough, the
language is no longer personal.

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These scars bear witness,
but whether to repair

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or to destruction,
I no longer know.

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Three.

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It is true that there
is visible on the throat

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a very extended scar
which might throw

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some doubt upon the soundness
of the underlying parts,

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if one were not reassured by
the appearance of the scar.

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When I try to speak, my
throat is cut and, it seems,

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by his hand.

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The sounds I make are
prehuman, radical.

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The telephone is
always ripped out.

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And he sleeps on,
yet always the tissue

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grows over, white as
silk, hardly a blemish.

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Maybe a hieroglyph for scream.

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Child, no wonder you never
wholly trusted your keepers.

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Four.

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A hand with the will, rather
than the habit, of crime

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had wished to make an attempt
on the life of this child.

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Left for dead in
the woods, he will

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have owed the prompt recovery of
his wound to the help of nature

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alone.

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In the 18th century, infanticide
reaches epidemic proportions.

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Old prints attest to it--

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starving mothers
smothering babies in sleep,

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abandoning newborns in sleet
on the poor house steps,

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gin-blurred setting
fire to the room.

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I keep thinking
of the flights we

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used to take on the
grapevine, across the gully

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littered with beer bottles,
where dragonflies flashed.

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We were 10, 11 years old--

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wild little girls with boyish
bodies, flying over the moist,

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shadow-mottled earth
till they warned

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us to stay away from there.

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Later, they pointed
out the venetian blinds

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of the abortionists house.

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We shivered.

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Men can do things to
you, was all they said.

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Five."

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And this is the last
paragraph of Itards book.

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"And finally, my Lord, looking
at this long experiment,

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whether it be considered
as the methodical education

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of a savage, or as no
more than the physical

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and moral treatment of
one of those creatures

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ill favored by nature,
rejected by society,

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and abandoned by medicine,
the care that has been taken

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and ought still to
be taken of him,

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the changes that have
taken place, and those

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that can be hoped for,
the voice of humanity,

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the interest inspired
by such a desertion

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and a destiny so strange--

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all these things recommend
this extraordinary young man

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to the attention of
scientists, to the solicitude

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of administrators, and to the
protection of the government.

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The doctor in Uncle Vanya--

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they will call us
fools, blind, ignorant.

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They will despise us.

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Devourers of the forest leaving
teeth of metal in every tree,

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so the tree can neither
grow nor be cut for lumber.

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Does the primeval forest
weep for its devourers?

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Does nature mourn our existence?

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Is the child with arms burnt
to the flesh of its sides

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weeping eyelessly for man?

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At the end of the
distinguished doctor's lecture,

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a young woman raises her hand.

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You have the power in your
hands, you control our lives--

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why do you want our pity too?

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Why are men afraid?

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Why do you pity yourselves?

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Why do the administrators lack
solicitude, the government

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refuse protection?

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Why should the wild child
weep for the scientists?

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Why?"

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