By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This repeat of 'Ancient' keeps the same argument: grief, soul-loss, power, business, war, and care for one's own are not modern problems but recurring human failures.
The corrected tyrants line sharpens the poem's claim that modernity changes the costume more than the underlying violence.
Under the title 'Ancient', grief and metaphysics fold together: 'The horror of her dying' set against 'The mirror of her, / being alive', with the bleak verdict that 'Nothing we know settles / the soul' and is 'Worse when the soul is gone'. From private loss the poem pivots to power and contempt for the modern - 'No man's hands tell me / how to conduct business', 'They think they are modern / with their war' - and indicts rulers who never bothered 'caring for / their own'. The closing appeal to 'Omar Kiham' (Khayyam), that 'each face and place / is the same', frames all of it as recurrence: nothing in the present is new, only ancient suffering in modern costume.