Page 231
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Hey Sailor" carries the reader through a plunging sea vision of birds, wind, mist, religion, time zones, South Seas trouble, courage, watchfulness, and the helm.
With the OCR damage corrected, the page's motion is clearer: the sailor address becomes a rolling cosmology where navigation, danger, memory, and praise keep changing scale from the body at the helm to the edge of the universe.
'Hey Sailor' is one long breathless sentence that swings between the helm and the edge of the universe. It opens on 'that second / of sight' before a plunge 'further than a / big bird' that 'strangely it didn't die,' through a 'carry down hard' and a wind 'wider / than evem a wilder wind' loose 'in the / mist and unlenting swrill.' The voyage crosses metaphysics and geography at once - 'across / the Cross of religion and time zone' - while 'watching the bottom way beyond the last top of / the universe.' Memory and dread recur - 'laughter out in / the South Seas while looking for trouble,' then 'I need wait in horror for the ends of your / adventure' - and the speaker confesses 'it is hard for / me,, my mind spinning,, atempting to see, courage.' It lands on praise: 'Standing watch and licking micro tongue off the / helm now you are the best since the very beginning.' Kept spellings and punctuation 'evem,' 'unlenting,' 'swrill,' 'atempting,' and the doubled commas are preserved.