Page 440
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This variant of 'Forget Me Not' turns abandonment into a meditation on innocence, identity, and the uneasy ease of being an American.
The page is more socially charged than the companion version. Cleaning the OCR clarifies its references to whiteness, childhood, wickedness, and choice, making the separation feel tied to moral history, not just personal loss.
A third 'Forget Me Not' turns from grief toward accusation. The plain-spoken 'I love to be white / It should be easy for an American' drops a social charge into the love-poem, and the speaker indicts the addressee who 'only want to play with life' and 'haven't even made a choice' since childhood. The cosmic refrain returns - 'Many have seen the end / when the Sun goes across the Moon' - tying private failure to a shared apocalypse.