By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The Old Road moves from wine and unpaid herb to post office boxes, tracks, trains, canyons, and the difficulty of getting lost alone anymore.
The scan-corrected text makes the road feel practical and mystical at once. Ordinary systems like mail, tracks, and trains sit beside canyons and the `snatching away of life`.
'The Old Road' sits between the practical and the mystical. It reuses the Christ-figure shorthand - 'He brought wine / Well, he did not pay for herb' - then drifts through ordinary systems: post office boxes, the shrug 'Well, it you don't ya' don't,' and a train where 'A railroad train / can not be understood any more.' The road's real loss is solitude - 'No one knows how to get lost / alone anymore' - and the close turns ominous: 'all the canyons shown gold,' yet for him 'his fingers were / the snatching away of life.'