Page 15

By Jack Joseph Smith

Streetcorner I didn't ask for anybody to cross my way, or to cross me Settled at my desk now to make myself deliver I am the conscience withdrawn Street gossip, and sin in the underground of homes, pass me by, and hide away, from me, theone, Angry and narrow eyed, the assult of my type makes life appear only to me I carry crosses and curses round robin Dawn to dusk I cherish class, but nothing of what would of been That is dislike and watching to close, the departed and the departure And my aloneness In a whisper That will not wilt, this sapline, this concrete tree

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker writes alone at a desk, resisting gossip and carrying crosses and curses while trying to make something that will not wilt.

The speaker joins conscience with withdrawal, then ends with the handwritten sapline and concrete tree. Those words connect growth with an urban, hardened form. The unmarked in above the departure line leaves that sentence's revision order uncertain.

Claude

'Streetcorner' has a speaker who 'didn't ask for anybody to cross my way', settled at a desk as 'the conscience withdrawn' while street gossip and 'sin in the underground / of homes' pass by. He carries 'crosses and curses round robin' and ends in 'my aloneness / In a whisper / That will not wilt, this sapline, / this concrete tree'.

The poem sets a solitary, watchful speaker against the hostility of the street, turning isolation into a kind of stubborn growth. The handwritten close moves from a young 'sapline' to a 'concrete tree', an image of something living made hard and urban. The typed lines are plain and flat, and the revisions sharpen the ending into a single image.