Page 60

By Jack Joseph Smith

Sequence II The curl in the corner is gone without a clue She saw it all as love talked a dingy turn Bird like she sucked and beaked and saw Juggle is a turning trick; I know it well You let go before you catch, and then you think not to touch, and then you pretend that all is not there at all, and there is the wish when the matter of life is let to go Cared not for as a garmet, or as skin, watch a kiss blown across a stream Two alone, North and South; East and West By and by catching a glimpse Dreaming oppisite directions Until another passing of the same When birth grows to this place again We will avoid the hurt; she created the pain...

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker links a lovers' encounter to juggling, separation and a future effort to avoid the hurt.

The speaker describes letting go before catching, then places two people across compass directions. The ending distinguishes the hurt they hope to avoid from the pain she created. An unresolved marginal word prevents a firm reading of that annotation.

Claude

'Sequence II' watches a woman who 'saw it all as love talked a dingy turn' and, 'Bird like', 'sucked and beaked and saw'; the speaker calls love a juggle where 'You let go before you catch' and then pretend 'that all is not there at all'. Two people drift 'North and South; East and West', 'Dreaming oppisite directions', until the handwritten revision of the last line gives 'We will avoid the hurt; she created / the pain...'.

The poem treats love as a trick of timing, letting go and pretending, with the compass lines turning separation into geography. The handwritten 'she' in place of the struck 'we will' shifts the last line from a shared future to one person's past act, and the trailing ellipsis leaves that charge hanging. A margin phrase beside the ending is not legible enough to read.