Memory The Old Way

By Jack Joseph Smith

This was the best I could do for you Over this place I wanted love ones to leave I suppose it is better they misguessed the clue That adventure would only bring back another weave He walked all by himself Looked around the corner Sighed evil with relief But he couldn't cross sooner After time had tossed his cape And when distance did not occus The fear of light but also life was over Not to mention the glimmer of a gun When hell and truth could not concur And the soul enough even to hurt the sun Where it takes three to touch
and seal the sin First The Father, The Son, and The Moly Ghost When where your from and where you've been Make up the difference and the cost Of those other two to come Say you are as strong as Pope John Paul Refuse to lie no matter the distruction Go ahead now nimble about Albert Camue Or justify Joyce's splendid peddler Or live these correct reflections Thereafter to farm a connection with Faulkner All around a dark, dumb, mute love for Mississippi As if I could read, you lending me your ear We of n o given care from anywhere Leaving life alone for home; where push comes to shove There with the unknown, and nearly happy

Original Scan

Page 17
Page 18

AI Interpretation

GPT

A memory poem in which literary, religious, and personal reference points are folded into a restless search for home, love, and moral bearing.

The poem reads like an attempt to think with memory rather than simply describe it, letting names and places act as emotional coordinates.

Claude

The poem attempts to think with memory rather than about it — names, places, and literary references arrive not as allusions but as emotional coordinates, each one plotting a position in a moral landscape the speaker is trying to navigate. The 'old way' of the title suggests a mode of remembering that predates analysis, where recall is an act of orientation.

The four-page span allows the poem to wander the way memory does — not linearly but by association, returning to love, loss, and home from different angles until the terrain becomes familiar without ever becoming clear.