Orangutans at the Jardin des Plantes
Elizabeth Schultz
In another age,
the orangutans defined
freedom and chose not
to be entangled in words.
Voiceless, their eyes speak,
their lips sneer and smile.
The visitors discuss them.
Some call daily, checking
in as they might on a cousin,
imprisoned for decades.
Glass is thick between them.
Captured, the orangutans do
as they please. They are spoiled.
At teatime, their keepers serve
them multiple bottles of tea,
plus yogurt imbued with
birth-control pills. Swinging
among ropes, dangling from
tires, sorting through wooden
shavings, they study leisure,
they engage idleness.
The keepers discuss them
with psychologists, philosophers.
The orangutans polish the glass.
They gaze out at passing masses.
They imitate kissing couples.
They adore girls with red hair.
Human forms fracture, reflecting
against orangutan inscrutability.
The orangutans listen to striking
workers ranting through bull horns.
Faces fuse. Sounds merge.
Freedom is mute.
the orangutans defined
freedom and chose not
to be entangled in words.
Voiceless, their eyes speak,
their lips sneer and smile.
The visitors discuss them.
Some call daily, checking
in as they might on a cousin,
imprisoned for decades.
Glass is thick between them.
Captured, the orangutans do
as they please. They are spoiled.
At teatime, their keepers serve
them multiple bottles of tea,
plus yogurt imbued with
birth-control pills. Swinging
among ropes, dangling from
tires, sorting through wooden
shavings, they study leisure,
they engage idleness.
The keepers discuss them
with psychologists, philosophers.
The orangutans polish the glass.
They gaze out at passing masses.
They imitate kissing couples.
They adore girls with red hair.
Human forms fracture, reflecting
against orangutan inscrutability.
The orangutans listen to striking
workers ranting through bull horns.
Faces fuse. Sounds merge.
Freedom is mute.
Listen to Elizabeth read the poem here:
About the author
Elizabeth Schultz lives in Lawrence, Kansas, following retirement from the English Department of the University of Kansas, where she was Chancellor’s Club Teaching Professor. She remains committed to writing about the people and the places she loves in academic essays, nature essays, and poems. These include Herman Melville, her mother, and her friends, the Kansas wetlands and prairies, Michigan's Higgins Lake, Japan, where she lived for six years, oceans everywhere. She has published several books, and her scholarly and creative work appears in numerous journals and reviews.