Page 236

By Jack Joseph Smith

Domonic This wind in you now never loose from Skies you see yourself not to sway from See golden your smile melting when you understand hardship for others is you east of freedom fighting Watch your forhead for the game The grand sea is better than the finest ship So it is simple and slight as the sword Your gut is your word Yea you are able to say Jack saw you The best of dreamers, the first among warrors When you are a full fellow the best of You will be what I have BEEN NOT.

Original Scan

Page 236

AI Interpretation

GPT

"Domonic" praises wind, hardship, freedom, dreamers, the grand sea, the gut as word, and a future self marked by the handwritten claim "BEEN NOT."

The page reads as a blessing that keeps revising itself at the bottom. The handwritten ending complicates praise by turning the speaker's absence or failure into part of Domonic's possible becoming.


Claude

'Domonic' is a blessing-poem addressed to a younger man, charging him with elemental steadiness: 'This wind in you now / never loose from / Skies you see yourself not to sway from.' It pictures grace under strain - 'See golden your smile melting / when you understand / hardship / for others is you east of freedom / fighting' - and gives terse martial counsel: 'Watch your forhead for the game,' 'The grand sea is better than the finest ship,' 'Your gut is your word.' The speaker witnesses on behalf of another - 'Jack saw you / The best of dreamers, the first among warrors' - before the handwritten close turns the praise inward and rueful: 'the best of / You will be what I have BEEN NOT.' That ending makes the elder's failure into the youth's promise. This reading stays provisional where the lower handwriting is concerned, since the page is reviewed-with-handwriting-ambiguity. Kept spellings 'forhead' and 'warrors' are preserved.