Page 61

By Jack Joseph Smith

It was the motion; image is: Then parTing again. Returning back. A child mindful of school lessons. Waiting to hear. With your foot there is no line. Baldwin "Go Tell It On The Mountain". To understand a purpose is to see no purpose. The artist rebels at purposeful- ness - but not always so. Conscience become useless; history is like marble and round. Thudding with circle. Consider why this is so. Your tears wash but one face through many. See them. And in the imaginary love stories the magnification allows them to feel themselves in the presence of sympathetic heros. But beyond the fence - just behind it - come the voices whose hands contain what heros would not touch but one complain of. Odd man out? the drunk nods is nogged and sleeps smiling.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker moves from a child's learning and a Baldwin reference into questions about artistic purpose, conscience, tears, and imagined heroes. Voices beyond a fence precede an odd man out and a sleeping drunk.

The writer questions artistic purpose and the comfort readers seek in sympathetic heroes. Tears and the hands of the voices replace the old fear-based interpretation. The uncertain closing verb limits a conclusion about the drunk, and the Baldwin title is a reference within the manuscript rather than evidence of a borrowed passage.

Claude

A handwritten passage that moves from 'A child mindful / of school lessons' and Baldwin's 'Go Tell It On / The Mountain' to 'To understand a purpose is to see / no purpose. The artist rebels at purposeful- / ness', 'Your tears wash but one face through many.', and the ending 'the drunk nods / is nogged and sleeps smiling.'

The writer weighs purpose and art against fear and comfort; parTing and nogged stay provisional.