Older Now

By Jack Joseph Smith

You stepped aside for a little while However you watched it happen The way your friends lied to you You were such a fool That in another time You would have been The laughingstock of a Kingdom That would be good enough to be so to speak Or to say to yourself That they, one and all, were gathered as exquisite actors He was told by a good man when he was four years old That he was a bastard from L.A. It was not the nicest thing

ever said to him But it was up there He read that Gurtuide Stien had said That everyone was twenty six, back when she used to chat alot I think that is how old he was when he wrote this And if I were to repeat it there is no question it would have changed This is for women as well Perfect as your first swim Perfect as your first pearl And you have seen them Still stand around and snarl And he holding one hand after another Thought he grew into what he knew

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker describes lying friends, a hypothetical Kingdom's laughingstock, and a childhood insult. A remembered age claim attributed to Gurtuide Stien leads to thoughts about repeating and changing the writing, first experiences, snarling observers, and someone growing into what he knew.

The speaker shifts among you, he, and I without settling their relationships. The insult and age claim belong to the poem's account; neither establishes the author's origins or the date of composition.

Claude

The poem addresses a 'you' who watched 'The way your friends lied to you' and might have been 'The laughingstock of a Kingdom', then turns to 'he', who 'was told by a good man / when he was four years old / That he was a bastard from L.A.'. It recalls that 'Gurtuide Stien had said / That everyone was twenty six' and ends with 'Perfect as your first swim / Perfect as your first pearl'.

Betrayal is looked back on with rueful self-mockery, and the shift among 'you', 'he' and 'I' keeps the subject at a distance. The insult and the hypothetical laughingstock are the poem's statements, not established biography.