Page 187
By Jack Joseph Smith
As you get
I did not see the last man die
I think that means
That I can not cry
I hate questions
And I have nothing else to die
for;
nothing else to say
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
GPT
The page links aging with emotional exhaustion, where not witnessing the final death leaves the speaker unable to cry yet still unable to stop speaking.
Its phrases are plain, but they land hard. Questions are hated because the speaker has reached a point where explanation feels empty; what remains is only a narrow line between dying for something and having nothing left to say.
Claude
Widely spaced lines link aging to emotional depletion in plain, hard statements: 'I did not see the last man die / I think that means / That I can not cry.' The speaker 'hate[s] questions' because explanation has gone empty, and the page narrows to a single exhausted edge - 'nothing else to die / for; / nothing else to say' - where dying for something and having no words left meet.