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By Jack Joseph Smith

Change The Wallet Guilty Inside nothing changes Ya all think it Young and old Think it has Walking down the street Beat to death Some smile, and some do not Going by some know, some don't It is all the same Some have heart as one thing Some are seperate in mind And don't know how to think As long as there is war And those who wish there wasn't MANY The American's I have known FEW I and now know still stay alike

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

"Change" argues that inwardly nothing changes very much, because youth and age, smiles and blank faces, thought and thoughtlessness all continue inside the same national life of war and those who oppose it.

The page keeps flattening distinctions that people usually rely on to tell themselves history is moving. The handwritten The Wallet and Guilty annotations make the civic judgment feel more accusatory, while MANY and FEW I sharpen the contrast around Americans the speaker has known. The bottom replacement leaves the poem with people who still stay alike, making change feel more like repetition than transformation.

Claude

'Change' argues that nothing really does: handwritten 'The Wallet' and 'Guilty' open onto 'Inside nothing changes', though 'Young and old / Think it has.' Life is reduced to a street where people are 'Beat to death' and 'Some smile, and some do not', and the moral sorting is flat - 'Some have heart as one thing / Some are seperate in mind / And don't know how to think.' Set 'As long as there is war / And those who wish there wasn't', the closing 'The American's I have known' (handwritten MANY, then FEW) 'still stay / alike', making change look like repetition.