Page 441

By Jack Joseph Smith

It was more of the dream that never could catch me And I just went down by a stream and it had nothing to say And maybe I was gone before I ever left Now it is never sweet and sure but chance is so important Rather than the last I guess it is the first Seeing a Cyotti coming through the troubble necessarily is not a bad thing And I was not in the middle of nowhere to look star sight and know I better get out of this trance We look up and there is not a star left Now we get to be the last When I did not kiss a tom, Or when I said hi to a black bird That didn't mean that I knew anything about death

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page drifts through dream, stream, trance, and a starless sky, ending with the speaker's admission that small gestures did not amount to knowledge of death.

The cleaned spacing shows the page as one continuous meditation rather than separate stanzas. Its odd spellings and animal images keep the tone unstable while the speaker moves from dreaminess toward a clear refusal of certainty.

Claude

A continuous drift through dream, stream, and trance, where the speaker feels 'gone before I ever left' and prizes 'chance' over certainty. A 'Cyotti coming through the troubble' is judged 'not a bad thing', and the starless sky delivers the page's hard turn - 'We look up and there is not a star left / Now we get to be the last.' It ends by refusing easy knowledge: saying hi to 'a black bird' or not kissing a 'tom' 'didn't mean that I knew / anything about death.'