Page 76

By Jack Joseph Smith

Loss Of The Sun Time an place didn't make a differance The rifle he was pulling had a feeling, and it was watching, colors mixed and brushed Yes all of her he saw, even with her trying She just happened to be a Moon on film Police were on their way to kill her anyway Needing to be exqusit with terror and tonque There as a thread, the quick comfort of violence done Once to begin with no to straw Either or gold No to the dream called the sameness It is the rejection of sorrow Always known Tougher than any two strong trees you've seen Exactly on this Earth this movement back AS if you were THE IMAGE OF A right place, at the right time, thought good enough, is scaled A trick on the way to knowing, and no one is held to it Only death makes God longer against the Sun Housing or shade or both still alone And a starlight

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page treats violent perception as something half personal and half cosmic, with terror, sorrow, place, fear, starlight, and the sun all pulled into the same field.

The handwritten revisions make the page stranger and more self-correcting: straw and gold become an either/or, the rejection of sorrow becomes `Always known`, and the final isolation is answered by starlight.

Claude

The first 'Loss Of The Sun,' the most cinematic of three drafts of one violent vision. 'Time an place didn't make a differance / The rifle he was pulling had a feeling, / and it was watching, colors mixed and brushed' fuses gun and gaze, and the woman is filmed into a celestial image -- 'She just happened to be a Moon on film' -- while 'Police were on their way to kill her anyway.' The violence is aestheticized: 'Needing to be exqusit with terror and tonque,' 'the quick comfort of violence done.' Handwritten revisions push the draft toward conviction and scale: 'It is the rejection of sorrow Always known' replaces a struck 'never', 'this movement back' extends the Earth line, and 'AS if you were THE IMAGE OF A right place, / at the right time, thought good enough, is scaled' rewrites chance as picture and measure. It then climbs toward the cosmic, 'Only death makes God longer against the Sun,' ending in bare isolation, 'Housing or shade or both still alone / And a starlight'. Source spellings 'an,' 'differance,' 'exqusit,' and 'tonque' are kept as written; the handwritten 'IMAGE' is written with a Y-like G.