Page 26

By Jack Joseph Smith

An Intellectual Laborer He went to dig at the dirt At least Swans fly low through Louisiana moss Fast with omph and stretched tongue; he looked round the Earth Then with precision; he breasted up all his energy into his narrow vision It was like that Swan's lost fear of the hunter, when speed wouldn't permit anything but the next Moon He did not change direction; he just went into the Earth with a shovel Maybe like a beak after a Mole on a mountain, it was difficult flight going down But still like a birdhead in the sky, he felt sure he could lose his mind Women and children overlooked him from above, but he could concentrate on nothing that it was all about;, as Jesus over the Swan, and the Swan never looking up, because of being busy being fast The instant the Swan was shot, he stopped his project on the family grave He then approached the men who had blown out both brains, and laughed at them like an estate at each and every boss His removal with some ease in deliberation recognized... They had little on him in terms of repetition:

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The poem fuses digging, bird imagery, death, and class contempt to portray labor as a driven, half-mad act of defiance.

The laborer digging at the dirt is repeatedly compared to swans, moles, and beaks, so work becomes animal motion guided by instinct and velocity rather than reflection. The turn at the family grave and the shot swan brings mortality directly into the poem's account of effort. When he laughs at the men and bosses, the figure becomes resistant and unreadable, someone whose repetitions have hardened into a strange kind of superiority.

Claude

Titled 'An Intellectual Laborer', the typed poem follows a man who 'went to dig at the dirt', comparing his fixed, fast descent into the Earth with a shovel to swans flying low 'through Louisiana moss' and 'a beak after a Mole on a mountain'; when 'the Swan was shot' he stops 'his project on the family grave', approaches the men who fired, and laughs at them 'like an estate at each and every boss'.

The laborer's narrow, driven focus is rendered through bird imagery, so digging becomes a kind of flight turned downward. The shot swan breaks that concentration and turns the poem toward death, family and the men with guns, whom he answers with laughter rather than fear. The closing lines leave him unreadable to those who would judge him, a worker whose repetition is also a kind of freedom.