By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page moves from Van Gogh, art, and blindness into a meditation on lost chances and damaged perception, ending with crawling earthly things between moon and sun.
The handwritten note beside Van Gogh joins loss to a missed CHANCE, while the emphatic FEIRCE leaves the feeling deliberately rough. Night is taken out of the stars and given back, swimming becomes difficult without depth perception, and the earth fills with crawling mediators between larger celestial forces. Fragmentary surrounding annotations are omitted.
The page begins with art and its failure to be seen, 'Many not looking / when Art shows / that Van Gogh / swirls for all of us,' and follows that loss into 'having A / CHANCE / FEIRCE.' Blindness is treated almost dismissively, 'So when I am blind / So meaning so what,' before the speaker claims an active relation to the night sky, 'I have taken the night / out of the stars / and given it back.' The closing lines trade sight for bodily knowledge, 'I can only swim / without DEPTH / PERCEPTION,' landing on the crawling things of earth as the true marker of difference 'between the moon & sun.'