Page 78
By Jack Joseph Smith
Waiting
The good greatness
And the clean pleasure
without purpose
of man
Is only wandering
in the clouds
In the air is very fine
in all ways
Yet with feet on the ground
Many times thought
makes it better
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
GPT
This cleaner repetition of the previous page keeps the same contrast between cloudlike human drifting and the grounding effect of thought joined to the earth.
The variant is useful because it makes the core idea clearer: abstraction by itself is pleasant, but not enough.
Claude
A near-identical retype of the facing 'Waiting,' the lines run clean from 'The good greatness / And the clean pleasure / without purpose / of man' through 'wandering / in the clouds' to the grounded turn 'Yet with feet on the ground / Many times thought / makes it better.' As the settled version it presents the same verdict - reflection outweighs purposeless airiness - without marginal additions, the poem fixed in its final shape.