I also think this is very strong work.
While I could live without the epigraph, and I generally don't like epigraphs, I still vote for keeping it. I found it to be an interesting fact, for one thing, and I think the reminder that infants can't speak clears the way for you to use elevated diction in the poem, since it reminds us from the start that these are not the infant's actual words, but words of an adult who is trying to translate the infant experience into adult-talk. (I don't think it makes much sense to say that a newborn infant who cannot speak would, if he could speak, use the vocabulary of a ten-year old rather than of an educated adult.)
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