Page 30

By Jack Joseph Smith

He cut his ladies splendor with cowboys in wide oak trees bringing oceans to the desert knowing that there is no such number as seven A candle as a helm with nothing done Birds and fish and snakes While wanders die on jib and noose Possibly of the white man's fear to stay And the Black man's fear to go So sirs he has said do your best Avoid the yardarm, avoid the yoke No part of the deal when long line Has a motor or main sail down turned magic against the breeze for dancing Open the bildge the planks will whine Sheet yourself this terrible sea We have invited sharks on board Against the rush, leave the technologic We have a stance to make from underneath Do not you hear the legands of the dead singing yea

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker joins desert and sea images with commands to avoid restraints, open the bildge and face a terrible sea with sharks aboard.

The speaker distinguishes the white man's fear to stay from the Black man's fear to go, then urges the addressee to avoid the yardarm and yoke. Instructions about sails and the bildge lead to abandoning the technologic and making a stance from underneath. The closing question asks whether the addressee hears the dead singing.

Claude

A single typed block that moves from 'He cut his ladies splendor with cowboys / in wide oak trees bringing oceans to the desert' to a sea voyage of commands, setting 'the white man's fear to stay' beside 'the Black man's fear to go.' It urges 'Avoid the yardarm, avoid the yoke,' then 'Open the bildge the planks will whine' and ends asking 'Do not you hear the legands of the dead singing yea.'

The page reads as a sustained address, shifting from strange desert and forest images into nautical instructions delivered with growing urgency. Restraint (yardarm, yoke, noose) and deliberate risk ('We have invited sharks on board') pull against each other. The closing appeal to the singing dead gives the voyage a ceremonial, almost choral ending.