By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
One departed wind, timbers crossing a pond, dying steel, natural aluminum, and the raw-material sound collapse into murder disguised by romantic rock and roll, with children named as first victims.
The poem begins like the other Near pieces, with industry reduced to weathered matter and a single leaving wind. The handwritten crossing pond line makes the page feel interrupted by another current before it snaps into naked extermination. Romantic rock and roll becomes the soundtrack of denial, a culture playing while it destroys its own future.
'Near' one: only one wind, and that is the one that has left; steel sought its last sun; aluminum is natural; raw materials have a sound. 'Kill the son of bitches / Irish and Columpian / Kill the kids first / We play romantic rock and roll while we murder.'