By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page contrasts artistic limitation with the shock of finally seeing someone who changes desire and perception.
The speaker dismisses his own manual gifts and asks that his words be taken at whatever value they have. Correcting the opening bus line and the final 'Until I saw her' sharpens the page's movement from self-deprecation to awed recognition.
An untitled page that moves from self-deprecation to awed recognition. It opens with a grimly funny image of the speaker's own undesirability - 'The last bus I was on, / Alkida would have taken / a look and left' - and the familiar disavowal 'Music I have no talent in / my hands', with the modest plea 'Please take my words / for what their worth'. He can 'dream and read / A three actsplay every day', but real seeing eluded him until love: 'I never saw anything / Until I saw her'. The close knots desire and fate into something rueful - 'I did not wish for / what I wanted / And though it / might of wished for me / Possibly it is sorry now' - the wish reversed so that the wanted thing may regret having chosen him.