Modern

By Jack Joseph Smith

There-was alot of noise-at the first place. On the second place people drifted The third was a very sorry: stone ‘cold’ At the fourth place everybody dressed fine, but it got strange-as if the wind was: in curtains The smell'was so bad there at the fifth, that bodies-came when they were gone The sixth place is where life stopped I-however got unlucky: in the seventh place for moments Recollection has it that I lounged around; with the forever wounded that never let it diet

Original Scan

Page 72

AI Interpretation

GPT

A numbered catalogue of seven places, each worse than the last, tracing modernity as a series of environments defined by noise, drift, cold, strangeness, stench, death, and the company of the forever wounded.

Claude

The poem stages modernity as a descent through numbered stations — noise, drift, cold stone, fine clothes turning strange, stench, death, and finally the seventh place where the speaker gets 'unlucky for moments' and lounges with the forever wounded. The structure is biblical (seven days, seven seals) but the content is barroom and clinical. The last line — 'the forever wounded that never let it die' — names the company the modern poet keeps.