Page 222

By Jack Joseph Smith

Well when you are blinded you walk right out on the sea and take a stick, maybe an iron bar you take it and toss it back way away knowing it's the only brain you got You know you were there before you were Perhaps you did not see One and one makes two Eyes are twins Two again of the same Where one spot makes for each distance enormous time Let's likem it to the last sight of a ground hog. Reguardless of gender your fur shakes before you go under:

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Blinded motion across the sea becomes a rough philosophy of doubleness, where a tossed iron bar, twin eyes, and the last sight of a groundhog meet.

Walking onto the sea while blinded turns faith or desperation into a physical act, and the tossed stick or iron bar becomes the last instrument of thought. "You know you were there / before you were" gives the poem a strange prehistory, as if identity begins before sight can verify it. By the groundhog image at the end, animal trembling and human submersion belong to the same law.

Claude

Blindness here is an act of nerve: 'you walk right out on the sea' and toss away 'a stick, maybe an iron bar' - 'back / way away' - even though it is 'the only brain you got.' The page becomes a rough arithmetic of doubleness: 'You know you were there / before you were,' 'One and one makes two,' 'Eyes are twins,' each spot folding 'enormous time.' It closes by likening the moment to 'the last sight / of a ground hog,' whose fur 'shakes / before you go under,' binding animal trembling to human submersion.