By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker asks for fish as dominions disappear, then gathers a cork, a hare and andradite before a command to drag people from a bar.
The handwritten tide replaces canceled words in the opening line rather than supplying a separate heading. The following request for fish and the slightest nit making a stream keep that opening beside water imagery. Think always oppisite precedes a blunt order to drag people from the bar by their hair; one unread word in the opening revision remains omitted.
The poem opens on dying 'While dominions go away as a dream' and asks 'Find us fish from the waters / Where the slightest nit / Has made a stream'. After a list of 'The cork in the bottle', 'The split of the hare' and 'Immagine the andradite', it ends 'Just drag them off the bar / By the hair like girls'.
Three short stanzas move from loss and a fisherman's request, through a string of odd small images, to a blunt closing order. The instruction 'Think always oppisite' sits at the centre and suits the poem's abrupt turns. The handwritten revision replaces a comparison in the first line with the tide, which ties the dying to the water imagery.