Page 13
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem argues that modern power replaces human vice with colder inhuman systems, binding science, war, and rebellion into the same structure.
Nuclear and mystic forces are treated as parallel rather than opposite, which gives the poem its unsettling balance. Science is sent underground and soldiers are relieved of spiritual crisis, suggesting a world where technique suppresses inner reckoning. The final image of geometry and guilt leaving us on strings makes power look precise, abstract, and deeply manipulative.
An untitled typed poem in which 'The nuclear and the mystic striking human vices / from the societies' are replaced by non human ones, science is 'sent objectively underground', 'Through the tunnel no soldier needs a spiritual crises', and 'all our power in its strange marriage / of geometry and guilt' ends up having 'us ostensibility on strings'.
The poem reads like a compressed essay on modern power, where technology and mysticism both remove the human from human failings. Soldiers, revolutionaries and scientists are placed in the same system, which spares them inner reckoning while keeping them controlled. The closing image of geometry and guilt, aided by glass, suggests a precise, watching apparatus that makes people into puppets.