By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This brief page turns self-adoration, change, and image-making into a warning about how identity gets fixed by vanity.
The gust of wind image is strong because it suggests a self held together by force and motion rather than substance. The closing command to keep it at 'self' sounds knowingly defensive.
A short coda continuing 'The Sling' turns on vanity and self-fashioning: 'tell them / to take the change / Simply because you adore yourself'. The self here is held together by motion rather than substance - one has 'studied the gust of wind / that will keep you an image / All the way to the place you have seen'. Admitting 'Never perfect', it ends on a knowing, defensive imperative that refuses to be more than ego: 'I said self, / and let's keep it that way.'