Page 160

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Same I put ten cents on the counter And give or take some days I put ten thousand on the table I remember the first time I had cream and suger in a little porslin coffie cup in San Francisco in the year of nineteen sixty three Sitting with Gibbons Who I believe thought That the best of the universe That I thought it had to be too If it Was just natural Perfunctery To him

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

"The Same" contrasts small change with large wagers while recalling a 1963 San Francisco coffee shared with Gibbons, whose calm relation to beauty unsettles the speaker.

The poem moves easily between money, memory, and taste, making a porcelain cup feel as consequential as cash on a table. Gibbons matters because he seems to take the universe's best offerings as ordinary, while the speaker still experiences them as revelation. That difference becomes the real subject of the page: not wealth, but ease.

Claude

'The Same' sets small change against large wagers - 'ten cents on the counter' and 'ten thousand on the table' - then settles into a precise memory: 'cream and suger / in a little porslin coffie / cup in San Francisco in the / year of nineteen sixty three / Sitting with Gibbons.' The page's real subject is ease rather than money: Gibbons takes 'the best of the universe' as 'just natural / Perfunctery,' while the speaker still meets such things as revelation, and the handwritten corrections to 'universe,' 'too,' and 'If it' keep that uneven kinship visible on the page.