Glancing

By Jack Joseph Smith

The archery from the head has not been well placed Desires to communicate design speeches, with no sense of humor in the sound A last decency for honors sake is suggested, and the words are watched like animals within each others smell Diamonds in the ruff are kmarling down the long shafts at the end of the hoax in South Africa Along with a lecture I heard in nineteen sixty two at Notre Dame, Indiana about where the brain began And after 411 the slaves of Eden, the allegory of fine stones has rejected being polished down to the darkened viewing the Dovermenpincher's bite like the shot that gets the antler's Now up the trade on camera of unbrella s for rifles as education on call for interpertation has vanished And for those not tied offeece Street artists are the only protection Not even a Gothic bell is necessary at noon Collectors through the mail rap energy into religion Sinister powers construct frescos of production for the planets as we develope backwards what our offspring will do as lunatics

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A meditation on failed communication and misdirected thought, connecting diamond mines in South Africa, a lecture at Notre Dame, and the allegory of Eden to a world where education has vanished and street artists are the last remaining form of protection.

Claude

A glancing, associative survey of a culture losing the ability to interpret itself. 'The archery from the head has not been well placed,' words are 'watched like animals / within each others smell,' and 'Diamonds in the ruff are kmarling down the long shafts / at the end of the hoax in South Africa.' Threading in a remembered '1962 ... lecture ... at Notre Dame ... about where the brain began,' the poem builds toward open dread: 'education on call for interpertation has vanished,' 'Street artists are the only protection,' and 'we develope backwards what our offspring will do as lunatics.'

The title is a method statement: nothing is looked at steadily, so the poem proceeds by darting connections - archery, diamond mines, cameras, umbrellas 'for rifles' - that never resolve into a single argument because resolution is exactly what the poem says has been lost. Its anxiety is hermeneutic: with interpretation 'vanished' and even 'a Gothic bell' unnecessary at noon, meaning has gone unguarded, leaving 'Sinister powers' to 'construct frescos of production for the planets.' The grim closing inversion - developing 'backwards' toward offspring who become 'lunatics' - turns cultural decline into a literal regression of mind. OCR noise is significant ('kmarling', 'interpertation', 'Dovermenpincher's'); I preserve the source forms and read the more degraded links provisionally, but the through-line of vanished interpretation is clear.