By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Borrowing the Hindu stages of life, the poem frames error, damage, endurance, and departure as part of a reluctant spiritual passage rather than a clean escape.
The poem moves from a life-stage framework into a harsher story of harm and survival. The handwritten ending makes the abstraction personal: what remains strange is how one another can simply get up and leave.
'Wishing Short' begins 'Hindu man has four stages; work and family, / preperation and leaving; Sanyasam', then tells how 'She went out their and got life' while 'His intention was after alll / To rip her intire being / To bits'. Its later lines describe 'Leaves between two that touch / Silent as a sheave', insist 'We do not leave', and end in handwriting: 'isn't it strange / How one another, just up and left'.
The poem sets an orderly religious scheme of life stages against a messy story of harm and survival, and the short, plainly typed lines keep the tone flat. The tender middle image and the vow 'We do not leave' are undercut by the handwritten ending, which admits that people leave anyway. Source spellings such as 'preperation', 'their' and 'intire' are kept.