Page 45

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Govener's Mother. She, silver haired prim of 80 some And from boudoir this morn Lacked thee occasion scorn She, of aquired servants grace Called no maid come She'd had her loves at 21 Around the world she'd won Captain's 9 No need of Valentine Sniffs aristocratic nose of summation She knew with who Her age must dine Along the ridge of Oregon plains would woo But then good youth understands lifes time As would be for thine her people to tell Though man pioneer Bostonian had plans Never was she to be Mc Called La scave Believe she knew the song of the saved She'd seen Dam thirst on prarrie waves While fortune found her riled Portland now in She stepped out No lipstick yet with rouge on cheekbones tilt from nature's chisel Humph! A splendid day for sunlit USAGE And on the crowd I'll put my shinbone right sprout pEdEstrIAN Wounded Knee was over We walked from the Court House Steps And were newspaper revolutionaries Who got about as far as the local delivery

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker describes an elderly aristocratic woman preparing for the morning, remembers her past and then returns to the newspaper revolutionaries leaving the Court House. Several handwritten revisions alter her arrival in Portland and the crowded street scene.

The writer places aristocratic self-possession beside a disappointed account of political action. Dam and the unsettled riled annotations belong to this physical draft; the interpretation does not substitute the cleaner wording from page 048 or present the Wounded Knee statements as verified history.

Claude

'The Govener's Mother.' portrays a woman 'silver haired prim of 80 some' who 'Lacked thee occasion scorn', 'had her loves at 21', and 'She'd seen Dam thirst on prarrie waves', then steps out on 'A splendid day for sunlit USAGE', before the closing stanza 'Wounded Knee was over / We walked from the Court House Steps / And were newspaper revolutionaries / Who got about as far as the local delivery'.

The portrait of a proud pioneer matriarch turns at the end to the speaker's own small-scale protest. Dam, Govener and the other spellings are kept as typed; the revision rows near Portland stay unresolved.