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By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem says modern systems turn science, war, and revolt into puppeted forms of power unless people return to the place where myth began.
The complete universe containing justice in the middle of passion briefly offers a center the earlier institutions lack. But that possibility is threatened by the marriage of geometry and guilt, a phrase that makes power seem mathematically organized and morally diseased at once. The final image of being on strings gives the whole argument a puppet-like helplessness.
A revised typing of the 'nuclear and the mystic' poem that follows the earlier version through 'Through the tunnel no soldier needs a spiritual crises' but now arrives at a place 'where the complete universe / Contains justice in the middle of passion', urging us 'to point ourselves / out back to where the myth began;' before power 'has us ostensibility on strings.'
The revision adds a center the first version lacked: justice held within passion, and a call to return to the origin of myth. Against that, the 'strange marriage / of geometry and guilt' still leaves people as puppets, so the poem balances a possible way back against a precise, controlling order. The changes show the poet moving from diagnosis toward a tentative remedy.