Beginning

By Jack Joseph Smith

We were ‘born Paper airplane hats went around turning out the lights The white sheets were starched enough to creak And the nuns had still starched wings for breasts too While the-orphanage warden was a laymen Who was the-one coming in wearing a black tie To carry out the order that it was to black for light He was as busy-es a mm without a saint And the mms were as mmb as a statue without blue paint The assistents carried pencils and pads : But they: didn't wear robes - They got to wear-skirts (while) They told each other in secret they didn't want to do it: S86 the reason for the skirts was that they were still to loose-for Jesus WEEN the lizhts ‘went out on the demand of a SIREN Thet- hed TO BEGOD'S whistle to us It was ail in the nature-o? duty's novice obedience To go to the switch To the ends:of the corridor- Issuing us the new sounds of blackness And to the edge of each others ‘white cloth Is where the nuns pele hands were- touching We infents, knew blackness vas not unusual But the big DCCTCRPRISST seened right from the whispers- While me were to lete to now it was World Yar IT 1941 immediately young And Los Angeles vas efraid of Japan

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A vivid memory of wartime infancy in a Los Angeles orphanage during 1941, where nuns, paper airplane hats, starched sheets, and blackout sirens compose a scene of institutional origin that is both absurd and ceremonial.

The poem blends the comic details of institutional life with the gravity of World War II, making childhood memory and historical crisis share the same darkened corridor.

Claude

An origin scene set in a wartime orphanage: 'We were born / Paper airplane hats went around turning out the lights,' the 'white sheets were starched enough to creak,' and 'the nuns had still starched wings for breasts too.' A 'laymen' warden in 'a black tie' enforces 'the order that it was to black for light,' the skirted assistants 'told each other in secret they didn't want to do it,' and a 'SIREN' that 'hed TO BE GOD'S whistle' drives everyone to the switch at 'the ends of the corridor.' The poem lands its frame in the final lines: 'me were to lete to now it was World Yar II / 1941 immediately young / And Los Angeles vas efraid of Japan.'

The poem fuses two darknesses - the institutional lights-out of the orphanage and the air-raid blackout of 1941 - so that the infant's first knowledge is of obedience to a command to switch the world off, with the siren elevated to 'GOD'S whistle.' Its comedy is irreverent and bodily (nuns' wings as breasts, assistants 'still to loose for Jesus,' the 'big DCCTCRPRISST' assembled 'right from the whispers'), but the comedy serves a real claim: that consciousness begins inside someone else's authority and fear. The closing date-stamp converts private memory into history. OCR garble is heavy in the religious-authority line ('DCCTCRPRISST', 'Yar II'); I preserve the source spellings and read those words conservatively, but the wartime-orphanage frame is unmistakable.