Page 69

By Jack Joseph Smith

And wisdom walks way away Sacrifice doom There stars seek light Here a sun seeks shadow A ground swell is human wonder it is nature inch by inch When there is no place to set the table Lost is simply a dish on the street, even better a pan in the wood Watching through black lips, wings knached and singled through seaver Left flapping the subterranean, with the whore having one way to walk, while her user has two It-is-only-that when glory ceases to exist, getting up in the morning, is done on purpose The monster went with the process to appear Canter across the green facing fences risen I took a black cloth and wrong out the swett The water was the same, no clolor, maybe some yellow, the cloth stayed a sign on the rack I thought it might heplp me between my teeth as I get wriped, a will good with worry Then I realized that if all matter dosent bleed; sacrifice is nothing but not to tell.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker tests sacrifice through light and shadow, exploitation on the street and the labor of wringing sweat from cloth.

The opening includes doom, and wonder replaces Also in the statement about nature inch by inch. The speaker wrings a black cloth and notices water with no color or some yellow. The closing condition about matter not bleeding leads to sacrifice is nothing but not to tell. An omitted phrase between a will and good with worry limits the preceding thought, not the established wording of that final claim.

Claude

'Sacrifice' is headed by the handwritten line 'And wisdom walks way away' and a separate word, 'doom'. The typed poem sets 'There stars seek light / Here a sun seeks shadow', adds by hand 'wonder it is nature inch by inch', and describes a street where 'Lost is simply a dish on the street' and 'the whore having one way to walk, / while her user has two'. The speaker wrings out a black cloth whose water had 'no clolor, maybe / some yellow', so 'the cloth stayed a sign on the rack', and the page ends 'if all matter dosent / bleed; sacrifice is nothing but not to tell.'

The poem moves from cosmic balance to street exploitation to a small ritual with a sweat-soaked cloth, treating each as a kind of offering. The handwritten revision of the ending makes sacrifice consist in not telling, and one handwritten line near the end is only partly legible, so its middle is left out of this reading.