By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page makes high-wire labor into a study of doubled perception, where the worker's hand holds the spin and spouting while he is both beneath the top and, in another sense, the top itself.
Its power comes from technical concentration. The handwritten insertion around Hand / holds / THE SPIN, AND THE SPOUTING keeps the page visibly in revision, while the typed sequence moves from work procedure into identification: the worker is underneath, then beneath the top, then the top. The poem turns circus rigging into a logic of doubleness, with security and danger present at the same time.
This 'Just Before The Top' pass folds the whole highwire litany into one shape: the clamps, 'Resining down the spudder,' the all-caps handwritten insertion 'THE SPIN, AND THE SPOUTING,' 'Turning the wheel taut / Setting the leaver in the nitch,' and 'Peripheral viewing / for no sag and no bow.' It closes on the doubling that drives the sequence - 'He was underneath / Beneath the top / He was the top / Two of everything / Security and danger / at the same time' - though this reading stays partly provisional given the page's OCR-mixed band and the partial handwriting around the arrow.