By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page separates labor from evil, obedience from damnation, and heaven from the real spiritual motion of poetry, which it locates instead in the Holy Ghost.
The distinction between shoveling coal and taking orders is one of the sharpest moral turns in this run of pages. The man and woman crossing the universe feel less like lovers than figures whose paths only make sense after disappearance. Its theology is rough and direct: poetry greets God not through reward, but through living spirit.
The page draws its sharpest moral line by separating labor from damnation: 'I knew shoveling coal / Was not the devil,' but 'taking any kind of / order was.' A woman and a man cross the universe ('She just crossed across / the universe, / maybe he did too') with a casual 'See ya' in a little bit,' and the rough theology insists poetry greets God 'not Heaven, / for Christ's sake,. it's the / Holy Ghost.' The closing paradox - they 'did not find each other / when they were looking' yet 'knew everything' once 'they were gone' - makes knowledge arrive only after disappearance.