Page 265

By Jack Joseph Smith

Keeping Your Mouth Shut A chance at vision Let it come to you When you do it you won't quit on any terms All these days it was there and you iginored it The questions, the abstractions, the absolutes Wild as a boxer's skill, to fend them off The tips of the mountains I took To fend them off Still entitled as art,, like native thread You do not stop what you have seen Independant as dance There are no comparisions with being alone

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This variant of 'Keeping Your Mouth Shut' expands the vision lesson through ignored days, abstractions, a boxer's skill, mountain tips, art, native thread, and dance.

The repeated draft sharpens the governing instruction rather than merely duplicating it. Vision has to be defended against abstraction, and solitude becomes part of that defense.

Claude

A fuller variant of 'Keeping Your Mouth Shut' that expands the facing draft's vision-lesson. The same opening - 'A chance at vision / Let it come to you' - now adds the reproach 'All these days it was there and you iginored it' (source spelling) and widens the threat to 'The questions, the abstractions, the absolutes.' Where page 264 had a single boxer line, this draft doubles the refrain 'To fend them off,' inserting 'The tips of the mountains I took' so the defense gains scale. It firms the earlier hesitations into assertion - 'Independant as dance' rather than 'Not independant' - while keeping the same close, 'There are no comparisions / with being alone.' Reading the two pages together shows the poem sharpening its instruction rather than merely repeating it.