Page 9

By Jack Joseph Smith

Dark burns, and near to the place out of the end, bright is cold. The contour of life is somehow song sung by the end of man at man's beginning. i Trumph of the will is no mans easy breather. Whole frame the sun was still on him standing. Summer wind how it wispers one so slightly to the brink of listening. And a sea murmur got his body and he roses. Into the dew the rayed light always had to swim. The sun simply moved water as it came. So when peeking beneath plants he could always believe his hope had a mist for him. This was not a feeling like the abandonment of life, or like being only worlds. Animal looking out wonders about being the earth of things. Animal does not want to get far fetched. Seen way out is the sun. It glimmers, fades, and then asks the muscles of the human race to push out and catch its lone powers. Below there is sea. At the places they roll mice Animal inhabits. Islands, the ends of desert, and many times citys that made themselves back into dunes. And Where the sea is in sooths; where salt foam and blazed mind may settle on sands. under As the softest winds went right under hell through dreams, he Madison Avenue blanket rose for battle. Ah, a check would be at the doorstep of his seven seas! For Animal to speak of sin "When my mother wept it hurt my youth, she was a getting older delicate toy my fathers flung from their minds as wasteful children do. I have had not a home to lose. You see, for an American it is stupid to see your mother in silk falling from the penthouse wall. To discribe the stone makes it even more basely French. Something like that we ignored with the cost of living index. The Animal however is not any poet's pit of stone. Blissful continent we have loyal bird watchers. Not to mention what you've done for science getting gradeschool into cellars. Let the Atlantic wish bliss through death. I will fill the longing pull of the beast bums possibility dreams with pitchers of rum and cokes." It was on the Caribbean, where finery glass for noon ashore drinks cast out crystal upon the native waiters hands. Within the ship the lower deck tucks tightly away its Merchant Englishmen. They did look up from their duties.

Original Scan

Page 9

AI Interpretation

GPT

This scan-verified prose page turns Animal into a mythic American figure shaped by sun, sea, dunes, cities, mother-loss, Caribbean drinking, and lower-deck merchant Englishmen.

With the OCR drift removed, the passage reads as an intentional prose-poem rather than damaged text. Its pressure comes from repeated shifts between elemental landscape, national fantasy, family wound, and shipboard class observation.

Claude

A sustained prose-poem that mythologizes Animal against sun, sea, and dune. The opening is elemental and slow - 'Summer wind how it wispers', 'a sea murmur got his body and / he roses', the sun that 'asks the muscles of the human race to push out and / catch its lone powers' - with Animal wondering 'about being the earth of / things'. A sardonic modern image cuts in: waking 'under hell through dreams', 'he Madison Avenue / blanket rose for battle' expecting 'a check ... at the doorstep of his seven seas!' The middle gives a bitter first-person aria 'For Animal to speak of sin', recalling a mother who 'wept' and fell 'in silk ... from the penthouse wall', and vowing to drown 'the longing pull of the / beast' in 'pitchers of rum and cokes'. It closes shipboard in the Caribbean, where 'finery glass' is served by 'native waiters' while the 'lower deck tucks / tightly away its Merchant Englishmen'. Source spellings ('wispers', 'citys', 'discribe', 'Trumph') are preserved.