By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Throught tries to keep moving past what was left behind, holding youth, error, song, work, moon, and sunrise together in a determination to finish before falsehood takes over.
It reads like a small discipline poem. Thinking is allowed, but only up to the point where it still leads back into work.
Titled 'Throught,' the poem is a discipline of forgetting - 'Not to think about the place I left, / Not to think about that gift' - reduced afterward to 'just a song.' Its hinge is a small ethic of finishing: 'if I don't finish now / Then lies will be done,' so completing the work is the only defense against falsehood. The lunar-to-solar close, 'So by the Moon / Maybe there will be work / In the rising of the Sun,' leaves labor as a tentative hope handed from night to morning.