By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This cleaner `Last Way` copy presents the same threshold between death, memory, care, and the uncertain instant where the speaker may or may not return.
With the line corrected to `I have waited for you` and the artificial stanza gaps removed, the page reads as a compact sequence of declarations rather than a fragmented draft.
A second 'The Last Way' that reads as a compact sequence of declarations facing death. Identical in text to its companion page, it holds 'Death as a dream,' 'Memory as a snake' that 'have not bit me yet,' and the steadied 'I am not overcome.' The corrected 'I have waited for you / Never listened to you' frames the speaker's care as something offered without explanation - 'I care / And I explain nothing' - at the threshold 'Where I do / or don't / come back.'