By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Can't Tell" measures a life against labor, dirt, family memory, and the uneasy discovery that being thought rich can be its own kind of trap.
The poem keeps balancing worth against work, as if a shovel might tell the truth more clearly than speech. Grandpa's refusal to leave his labor in the dirt gives the speaker an inherited standard he can barely meet. The last turn is sharp and bitter: the fantasy of richness feels both false and strangely accurate because expectation itself has already altered the family story.
'Can't Tell' weighs a life against work, half-suggesting that you might be 'better with a shovel' or 'less, less than you are.' Against the speaker's own restlessness stands the inherited standard - 'Grandpa.wouldn't leave / His work in the dirt' - while 'Mine just about' admits a falling-off. The closing turn is bitter and double-edged: 'You thought we were rich / And were not you so right,' where the illusion of wealth turns out to have been a kind of truth.