Page 202

By Jack Joseph Smith

Eternal Do not let her leave Until the hero comes home from beneath the sea A hero comes home So that they can see Eyes equal now That far place Understood, the wonder of power, they have this chance to make,

Original Scan

Page 202

AI Interpretation

GPT

The poem imagines a woman's leaving suspended until a hero rises from beneath the sea, turning reunion, power, and equal sight into an almost mythic second chance.

The cleaned transcript restores the mythic sequence without the OCR debris from the blacked-out lower marks. The page still feels like a half-formed legend, but the readable poem now gathers around return, sight, power, and chance.


Claude

'Eternal' suspends a departure on a condition of myth: 'Do not let her leave / Until the hero comes / home from beneath the sea.' The hero's return exists so 'they can see / Eyes equal now,' a leveling of gaze that reframes 'That far place' and 'the wonder of power' as a shared 'chance / to make.' The trailing comma after 'to make,' leaves the creative act open and unfinished, fitting the title's reach toward permanence. The lower blacked-out marking is treated as non-transcribable per scan review, so this reading rests only on the readable typed body.