Page 23
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker recalls a fight in Pennsylvania cold around the day of a father's death, then connects the memory with a relay and a musical-ear question.
Reported speech identifies an eye on the left as gone but does not establish whose eye it is. The fight is placed close around the day of the father's death, not explicitly on an anniversary. A relay and baton connect that loss with what is passed on; the handwritten sholden question and reply to Don remain unfinished in sense.
Under the title 'Don' and a handwritten 'YEA', the speaker recalls 'knocking him down a road' in 'extreamly Pennsylvania cold' while 'rum was in the air', and hears 'that eye on the left is gone'. The fight is placed 'close around the day / Of my old man's death', when 'he kept to the relay / A long baton without a switch'.
The poem sets a street fight against a father's death and uses the relay baton as its image of what is passed on. Short typed lines and plain reported speech keep the tone blunt, and the revisions sharpen the timing and the relay image. The handwritten ending turns to questions: 'was it a musical ear on the soul of a sholden', then 'No, Don, that thre way its done?'