By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker withdraws into mud and the canyon, welcomes no visitor and says a return would mean knowing he was wrong, though not necessarily in what he had done.
The speaker refuses company and imagines a return as an admission of error. Handwritten TAKE changes the claim about the last thing, and the closing failure to recognize leaves the withdrawal unresolved. An omitted marginal word and uncertain placement limit the added thought.
In 'Mud' the speaker says 'I am here for the last TAKE' and adds by hand 'Don't think about it'; he has 'lost the wave', become 'The canyon now', and finds 'no silence more still', welcoming 'no person / To where I am gone'. If he came back 'I would know that I was wrong / Not necessarily in what I have done', and the page ends in handwriting: 'I don't recognize'.
The typed poem is spare and withdrawn, a voice that has gone somewhere so removed that return itself would be an admission of error. The handwritten additions, including the film-like 'TAKE' and the margin words 'And even' and 'Both', push the page toward self-address and an ending of estrangement.