By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Under the handwritten title 'CLOSE,' the page rejects detached intellectualism and asks for the courage to speak plainly about confinement and social disposal.
The scan-supported title sharpens the poem's pressure: this is not an abstract argument, but an insistence on proximity. The retained odd ending, 'about itt,' keeps the typed page's roughness intact.
Under the handwritten title 'CLOSE', the poem rejects detachment and demands proximity to suffering. It tells the reader not to romanticize a time 'when intellectual / was good for life' but to 'Think now about no thought'. Its real subject is confinement and social disposal - 'being put away' - which 'the average person' already knows about. The closing turn measures cowardice by silence: it 'would seem just a little bit cleaner / If one person would have gone beyond' to mention it, 'or worse, / raised their voice / about itt'. The kept source punctuation ('it,.', 'itt') preserves the typed page's roughness.