By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker insists that the broken journey on the page should be read as happy rather than sad, because night-chasing, daytime assembly, and self-correction have become the material of writing.
This is a useful self-commentary page. The corrected transcript makes the claim cleaner: brokenness on the page is not necessarily despair, even when it can be read that way.
'Happy' reads as the writer's own gloss on his work. It frames caring as compulsion - 'There has not been a choice / About caring' - and sets a daily rhythm: 'All through the night / I chase the dark I see / In the day I assemble / And make myself correct'. The poem then turns to defend itself: the journey was 'just to write about', and 'Broken up as it is / Is not supposed to be sad'. The wry final twist insists on a contrary reading - 'Although reading it that way,, / actually it is happy' - making brokenness, not despair, the mark of joy.