Page 137

By Jack Joseph Smith

Just Before The Top When he was fixing the highwire he was underneath it Tighting the clamps Two hands around the wind in the cord: Resiming down the spudder, the spin, and the spouting wicked inside the stretch Turning the end wheels taut, and setting the leaver in the nitch that won't groove Peripheral reading the view For the circumferance extream of sag and bow

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page renders high-wire labor as concentrated physical intelligence, where every clamp, wheel, sag, and bow is felt through the body.

The language is dense with trade vocabulary, which gives the poem its authority. It is less interested in spectacle than in the technical inwardness of someone working under the wire, reading tension, stretch, and danger through touch and peripheral sight. The result feels like a worker's hymn to precision under risk.

Claude

Just Before The Top: technical verbs accumulate, resining the spudder, spouting wicked inside the stretch, setting the leaver in the nitch that won't groove. Peripheral reading of sag and bow.