By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem gathers identity into blessing, linking the mother's Gaelic gift with creative history and love for Siobhan.
After the harder material around fathers and formation, these lines feel ceremonious and calm. The mother's gift is named as something ancient and quiet that can guide temperament, so inheritance becomes enabling rather than wounding. Ending with love for Siobhan and her consequence makes affection sound accepting, as if love includes what follows from the beloved's life.
The closing six lines of the Siobhan poem ask that 'all sweet song gather my grasp on worldly wings / Held by my mother's gift of the ancient Gaelic', to guide the speaker's 'temperment' through what is creative in his life, 'Which first is to love Siobhan, / and then to let her smile at her consequence.'
After the struggle with the father on the preceding pages, the poem ends as a blessing that draws on the mother's Gaelic inheritance instead. Song and language become the means of rising, and love for Siobhan is placed first among the creative acts of a life. The last line is gentle and generous, letting her enjoy the result of being loved without asking anything back.