Genius Baby
June 1 2014


The two men, in a language I didn't understand
were loud.
A foreign tongue is always hard
on the ear,
a mouthful of consonants, contorted vowels.
I heard pure sound, no hint of meaning.
And not a single word;
like random letters, on a printed page

no blank space.

So even the dullest man
was a genius baby,
lying in his crib
ears honed, eyes alert,
discerning patterns of words
from senseless noise.
A brilliant window, flung open
in the first few years,
when brain cells are piling on, synapses crackling
like an electrical storm.

Not tools, or opposing thumbs
but our mother tongue
that makes us human.

And me, a grown man
of some intellectual accomplishment,
unable to cut through the noise.

Some Slavic language
that sounds like argument,
embellished by hands, and stance, and flashing eyes.
Except they laugh
and clap each other's back
and walk away smiling,
their secret handshake

still undecipherable.

I thought I grew up smarter,
but just a few years old
and that open window

cranked shut,
my hearing blunted
mind made up.

The acquisition of language is the most complex and challenging intellectual task we'll ever accomplish. That pudgy, helpless, and seemingly passive baby, lying supine in her crib, is actually a genius, her mind buzzing with purpose and work. That growing brain is a formidable instrument, making sense out of what to any sensible adult would sound like random noise. It is plastic and fecund, while the adult brain is pruned and rigid.

We are shaped at a young age, and to some extent prisoners of our early years. Experience may give us short-cuts and processing speed ("heuristics", the cognitive scientists call them); but it also tends to lead us to the same predictable ends.