My Friend Pascal

By Jack Joseph Smith

Michael long ago Perhaps it was sixteen sixty six But then he would have been two. when you knew me and I knew you A sophisticated wildness Your courtyard, a window through which one looked Hands as waves; a finger point as a jib Sailor's skimming and skirting, their mannor, and there still, I would see your serious smile Though so far away These are times I realize as close up as back then, as a distinguished reality

Now the damage of my adventure Has me torn from time With a vision always unaccomplished My juristiction having me no more, than standing upright Remembering so long ago, truth is that which is so My friend Pascal

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A poem of friendship and distance that merges memory, seafaring imagery, loss, and the strain of carrying a damaged life forward.

The poem feels like it is trying to keep someone present through fragments of style, gesture, and remembered intensity.

Claude

The poem keeps Michael present through fragments — a date (1666), a jest about his age, seafaring imagery — as if presence could be sustained by the accumulation of details that refuse to add up to a portrait. The friendship is not described but performed: the poem's attention to its subject is itself the act of loyalty.

The reference to Pascal in the title and to 1666 places the poem in a double time: the historical past and the personal past overlap, giving the friendship a philosophical weight that the casual tone simultaneously undercuts and earns.