A Sound

By Jack Joseph Smith

Take them away from the place I sleep Let the dimes to dollars go round the clock Like bad buttons let the shadows misgage the weak; prepare the thief with no way of doing things To be caught ended in the street Hung by bras and shorts, a will be done There the crowd goes back, all, all alone, now keeping close in their sheets Was it tight enough, and why have things changed; or why haven't they changed enough But then again, probably his problem, was just unperceptive...

Original Scan

Page 45

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker asks for intruders to leave a sleeping place, then describes money, a thief, shadows, and a crowd returning to their sheets. The closing questions weigh how much things have changed before blaming someone's lack of perception.

The speaker links a private room to exposure in the street through clothing and money. The crowd withdraws after the image of someone hung by bras and shorts, leaving the speaker to question both change and judgment. The revised street phrase remains provisional.


Claude

'A Sound' asks to 'Take them away from the place I sleep', sees 'the shadows misgage the weak;', and pictures being 'caught ended in the street' and 'Hung by bras and shorts'. It ends by asking 'why have things changed;' and deciding that 'probably his problem, / was just unperceptive...'.

Night noise and public exposure give way to a shrug at someone else's blindness. The handwritten 'way of doing things' and the combined 'ended' come from revisions; 'ended' joins a typed word to a handwritten suffix without a caret, so that phrase is provisional.