By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page treats buying and selling as part of a larger world of lies, weapons, and struggle, then answers it with the ordinary hope of going to work.
The scan-reviewed text keeps the misspelled title and the handwritten 'Again,' making the call to bring life to its knees feel recursive. The ending grounds the harsher imagery in the dignity and hope of ordinary work.
'Bying and Selling' (the misspelled title kept from the typed source) warns that commerce rests on a lie one never wakes from: 'You will never wake up / once you have done it'. It lists weapons lost - 'the spindle, / the stick, the lance, / the sword' - amid 'Rumbleesilence onn the road', then sets the day's ambition: 'Not to tame life,, but to bring / life to its knees Again'. The bitter punchline is the handwritten 'Again' folded onto a modest aim - 'With our hope / Of just going to work.'