By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Across kingdoms and squalid places, women who are both disciplined and wild seem to draw life toward madness while remaining fully awake inside a bad dream.
The page keeps pairing refinement with ferality. "Women correct and wild" and "wishes on both tongues" suggest doubleness not as confusion but as a real condition of life. By the close, rhyme, daily repetition, and madness all coexist inside waking consciousness, making the dream feel social rather than private.
The most compressed pass at this recurring lyric pairs refinement with ferality: 'Across what was known / of land and sea / In a kingdom / Or a squalid / I have seen / Women correct and wild / With wishes on both tongues.' Doubleness reads as a real condition rather than confusion, and the close lets rhyme, daily repetition, and madness coexist inside waking consciousness - 'Day by day faceness a face to madness / full awake in a bad dream' - so the dream feels shared rather than private.