This is a poem where you have to imagine the speaker as a rather
stuffy boys school anatomy-- biology teacher,
really, who's giving an anatomy lesson.
And he would like to be less stuffy.
He would like to be able to talk about the body in bodily ways,
but he is he is somewhat bound by his training, et cetera.
So just imagine him that way, and he's speaking the poem.
"Anatomy Lesson: A School for Boys."
"Here we have the ordinary wrist between arm and hand.
A connection as old but less interesting
than the clavicle linking scapula and sternum.
And here, the joint called knee in the middle of the leg.
Femur, tibia, patella, my students,
is no Latin double play combination.
You must learn to be precise.
Just as a quadroon is not fully a Black man,
and a fingerprint reveals but is not a fingertip,
no ankle bone ever slew a giant or should
be confused with an ass.
I mention this because some of you on the last exam
wrote you could not tell the fibula from the truth,
and though this may have been a joke, it was a bad joke.
Evasive, crass like mistaking the pudenda
with a place from which one speaks.
No more of it please.
Here we have the anus and its sphincter-- common sources
of laughter, I know, but sophisticated-- capable
of magic.
And here the penis, which you must learn is no weapon.
The part of your body whose natural link is outside of it,
but the vagina is another class entirely.
A whole afternoon.
A lifetime-- sorry, where was I?
[LAUGHTER]
Let's move to the thorax--
that cavity in which the heart and lungs lie.
It too is very beautiful.
A place unto itself where nighttime is
perpetual and surgery common.
Everything is connected or wishes to be connected.
I can't stress that enough.
For tomorrow, read about the magnificence of the elbow.
For Thursday, the nape and the spine.
It's true.
People who don't love animals wash up a little
too quickly after making love.
They're expunging ancient memories of themselves,
even the smell of fish rising from the damp hair
around their genitals reminds them of something.
They rush off to bathrooms and submerge themselves
until it's all gone.
When they return, they are too clean to sleep,
and neighborhood dogs start to howl for the bones they have not
left out."