By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page moves from the labor of thought into the handwritten heading "Without A Sexton," then imagines sailors, stars, a clock-centered galaxy, blindness, and the impossibility of making another one.
The opening sounds like a speaker still working after declaring himself finished. The handwritten title or heading introduces a ritual absence, as if the cosmic scene lacks someone to tend its bell, grave, or clock. By the end, creation is not triumphant but exhausting: the galaxy can be seen, timed, and suffered, but not remade.
Short galaxy fragment: all fall the galaxy / Sailors have seen / there are only two stars at the same time. The center is a clock; you go blind and tired because you can not make another one.