Page 225

By Jack Joseph Smith

Yet rather than being two,, stretching, Thinking of rather than lieking the boys palms; the rabbit choses a pattern with distance in the senses Also Here the boy begins off Walking in his own way, with watching the rabbit along that side slide glance in a stride; so slight, so perfect How there outward lines, inward geometry, create their own angle, again another lost circle in the world The boy forgetting authority Will have him return for a school book While the rabbit has forgot nothing

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The rabbit refuses the boy's palms and instead teaches him a geometry of distance, glancing stride, and lost circles, while school authority waits somewhere behind him.

The refusal to lick the boy's palms matters because the poem protects wonder from easy reward or tame contact. Boy and rabbit become moving lines whose outward forms and inward geometry create an angle the speaker treats like a fleeting theorem. The last contrast is sharp: the boy must return for the school book, while the rabbit forgets nothing and answers to no authority.

Claude

Continuation of the rabbit lyric. Outward lines and inward geometry create the angle, 'another lost circle in the world.' The boy will return only because authority wants a school book; 'the rabbit has forgot nothing.'