By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The Loss of Quest treats quest-loss as moral exhaustion: sunlight and dawn lose force, desire is limited, the speaker's gift is rhyme, and guilt and fire turn back on themselves.
The verified transcript keeps the poem's pressure in its repeated limits. The closing warning gives the page a sharper edge than simple resignation.
'The Loss of Quest' is a poem of exhausted desire that still keeps its craft. The speaker shrugs off light -- 'I could care less about the sunlight / And the same about the dawn' -- and admits 'nothing better than gone' and 'I can not do anything I want,, / and either can you.' The central image folds the self away: 'Creese your soul and fold it, / from beginning to end.' Even silenced -- 'You make me quit to speak,, / though my gift is rhyme' -- it ends on a threat of reversal: 'Guilt and fire turn on themselves, / but then again, / watch what happens when they don't.' Source spelling ('Creese') is kept.