Page 85

By Jack Joseph Smith

Here For A Moment Here inside of brick faces, structures and streets During a place named Mount Lebanon for Cedar trees That I can't find through the strange locusts, of Western Pennsylvania Here I don't speak of literature But I can't blame the problem on the voices, or their silence Just the less and less Of all that's been read Like classic ideas and deeds, in the eyes of pennyless pockets As a spirit with only sign language left for my hands My body is not the wind that finds the horse in any land Rather a time zone has me in the consumptive That holds flowers, and sheds air About Pittsburgh steel back from 1981 I can remember the work it took To make what seems to be broken And while thinking breeze in humid August stillness I can recall both river boat and country club Now instead of the traditional design intended Duely I will write my memory into dust Like a worker who disreguards lunch with a pail of booze, or even the notion of turning household slang into lust.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Memory walks through Pittsburgh and Mount Lebanon as if work, literature, and local speech were all wearing down into dust.

Brick faces, missing cedar trees, pennyless pockets, and broken steel give the landscape a tired material weight. The voice resists blaming mere noise or silence; what hurts is the shrinking remainder of what has been read, built, and remembered. Writing becomes a laborer's act here, stubborn but unromantic, closer to dust and booze than to refinement.

Claude

In 'Here For A Moment' the speaker stands 'inside of brick faces, structures and streets' in Mount Lebanon and Western Pennsylvania, remembers 'Pittsburgh steel back from 1981' and 'both river boat and country club', and resolves 'Duely I will write my memory into dust'.

The poem mourns a shrinking culture, 'the less and less / Of all that's been read', set against the physical memory of mill work and a region in decline. The speaker casts himself as a spirit with 'only sign language left' for his hands, and writing becomes a worker's stubborn, unglamorous act, compared to a laborer who trades lunch for 'a pail of booze'.