By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker rejects swagger, regret, and the temptation to say I told you so, ending with the claim that her voice is all that is needed.
Boots, spurs, and Eliot all get folded into a self-portrait that keeps refusing the expected western posture. The poem is full of second thoughts, but it never settles into apology; instead it keeps testing what action might have mattered. The exception at the end turns the page personal, as if the only justified transgression would be for her.
Refusing both swagger and the satisfaction of 'I told you so,' the speaker disclaims western posture - 'I never had spirs / Red wings' - while invoking 'the oppisite' that 'T.S. Eliot says.' The poem is full of second thoughts ('Each time I did something less / I wish I would have done / something else') and treats true foresight as transgression - 'against a law / Excapt for her.' The handwritten close makes the exception personal and final: 'The voice is all you need to / Know.'