By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Silence is treated as a stronger medium than touch, heat, words, or tears, and the poem keeps lowering the listener toward the ground until self-importance is cut away entirely.
The repeated prohibitions make it sound like instruction for surviving emotional confusion without becoming theatrical or cruel. Staying close to the ground is not humiliation here but a better way of listening once one is already inside the trouble. The final correction is crucial: neither private sorrow nor private thought makes anyone the center of the universe.
An untitled litany of prohibitions counseling stoic restraint: 'Don't touch it / Don't touch the sound / Don't let it heat / Silence is strong.' It recommends staying low - 'close to the ground / is not bad to listen to / when you are already there' - and warns against misplaced grief: 'Don't cry for those / who are not your own', or 'they are just / laughing / at you.' The closing correction strips away self-importance for everyone: 'you are not the universe, / and nither is anyone else.'