Page 261
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
'Unknown' moves through wind, toughness, running, unwanted places, conscience, power, and death, with handwritten edits sharpening its command to choose another path.
The page reads like a moral correction under revision. The handwritten insertions make the typed advice more urgent, especially around voice, fate, keeping somebody, and refusing the lesser way.
Titled 'Unknown,' a moral exhortation under revision. It opens by ranking the wind - 'Being wind tops it, no dought' (source spelling) - and tells the reader to be 'tough, I mean fast at it,' to 'Watch the runner skip the branch' and find that 'sin and the street / be better than your room.' The handwritten-sharpened middle turns insistent: 'Look where you are not needed / by voice, not wanted by fate,' 'Cross the line each place / where you could keep somebody,' and warns that to 'go-back' and not find new work is 'Less.' It closes on conscience and mortality - 'your conscience be your guide,' 'What is best will live / No matter how powerful,' and the abrupt 'When you will die.' This reading stays provisional: the page is mixed-quality with dense handwritten overlay, and ambiguous marginal words were omitted rather than guessed.