By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem mixes old age, slaughteer, daughters, the moon, right and wrong, and a quiet promise of meeting, making moral order feel haunted rather than settled.
What stands out is the contrast between the moon's speech and the sun's sparse answer. The scan-verified title Sum makes the page feel like an attempted reckoning rather than only a solar image.
Titled 'Sum' (not Sun, per scan review), the poem attempts a reckoning that never quite balances. It opens in dread - 'Perhaps we are scared the old man will die first' - shadowed by 'the slaughteer / you see is having it,' then offers a strange consolation: 'Anyone who has ever asked for pieces to be / put back together, has gone to the moon, / as their perfect daughter.' Moral order is set spinning by chiasmus - 'a wrong and a right' answered by 'a right and a wrong' - leaving talk circular. The close splits the heavens: 'The moon talks,, thank our gods / The sun just says,, / we will meet,' so the sun's terse promise becomes the only firm sum the page can offer. Kept spellings 'Nott' and 'slaughteer' are preserved.