GPT
This variant keeps the pounding-hoof image but centers the speaker's astonishment at being lifted from the street by a force he associates with stars, crutches, tavern, and shadows.
The emphasis is gratitude and bewilderment. The corrected scan reading keeps the odd compounds and stuck-together words, which make the rescue feel rushed, breathless, and difficult to separate into clean thought.
Claude
A breathless reworking of the tavern-rescue scene from page 277, its words crowding together on the typescript. The woman is 'the best of pounding hooves / across theprairies I have stood still inand about,' and she 'went across my plainsmen mind' (source compounds theprairies, inand kept verbatim). Her voice over 'the trangle air' delivers the same star-omen, recast as paradox: 'the star that shines for you / does not come and go but came and sent me to my feet.' The bodily rescue repeats - lifted 'On my crutches' outside 'thetavern,' helped 'out of the black / bar' with the typed compound 'help to=pick=me=up' preserved. The close turns from action to mystery: 'I did not think a blank stare could mean so much / but then don't weall know shadows on the wall' - a Platonic flicker that makes the rescuer's empty look more legible than the shadows.