Page 65
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker recalls injured people at sea and losing a boat, then qualifies the account of going to heaven as being told of getting there.
After saying the first time I went to heaven, the speaker revises that account inline: told I'd get there would be a better way of potting it, I suppose. This qualification separates the promise from the claimed arrival. The closing question asks what could stop danger from trying after a chance has been taken and a blessing received.
This second 'Young Man And The Sea' retells the scene: bodies 'buldging from the eyes', 'Blood is coming out of what offered / to the sea and sun', 'Tingues suncken' by 'cracked conoes in my mind', the 'Muriel boat lift', and 'They came aboard / I lost my boat'. The speaker says 'I was / the first time I went to heaven' and adds by hand 'told I'd get there, would / be a better way / of potting it, / I suppose', then reflects that 'any kind of didtruction dosen't bother me' once 'you have taken the chance', ending 'What is to make you / Stop that danger from trying'.
Compared with the previous page the telling is flatter and more reflective, moving from the sea scene to the claim of having been to heaven. The handwritten self-correction scales that claim down to a promise, and the closing question makes indifference to destruction sound like both defiance and a warning.