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

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

A two-page poem of remembrance and reckoning, opening 'This was the best I could do for you / Over this place I wanted love ones to leave'. It moves through a shadowy figure who 'walked all by himself' and 'Sighed evil with relief', invokes the Trinity ('First The Father, The Son, and The Moly Ghost'), and lines up a roster of strength and letters - 'Pope John Paul', 'Albert Camue', 'Joyce's splendid peddler', a 'connection with Faulkner' and 'a dark, dumb, mute love for Mississippi' - before ending 'with the unknown, / and nearly happy'.

The 'old way' of remembering is associative rather than analytic: names, places, and writers arrive as moral coordinates - Camus, Joyce, Faulkner, the Pope - by which the speaker fixes his position in a landscape of love, sin, and home. The poem's spine is guilt and absolution, 'Where it takes three to touch / and seal the sin' through the Trinity, set against the autobiographical 'where your from and where you've been' that 'Make up the difference and the cost'. Its literary invocations function as standards to be measured against ('as strong as Pope John Paul', 'Refuse to lie no matter the distruction'), and the closing 'Leaving life alone for home; / where push comes to shove / There with the unknown, / and nearly happy' settles for a guarded, qualified peace rather than resolution. Preserve source spellings exactly: 'love ones', 'occus', 'Moly Ghost', 'Camue', 'distruction', 'n o', and 'servere' where present.