Page 233
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Mexico appears as a place of troubling freedom, gold flowers, red mineral, cliffs, unstable sand, shoulder's, laughter, and choices, where the speaker can arrive alone but cannot depart with Eninco by rowboat.
The shock of being more free in Mexico than in the U.S.A. gives the page its moral charge before it turns to color and texture. Gold flowers, old iron lace, red mineral, cliffs, sand, shoulder's, laughter, and sea make the landscape feel decorative, bodily, and elemental at once. The final refusal of departure with Eninco leaves freedom strangely solitary and unshareable.
The page opens on a moral shock, 'The horror of being more free in Mexico / than in the U.S.A.,' then turns toward sensation and landscape. Against 'that world that takes from you,' the speaker finds 'the way the flowers have / of showing gold' and 'the lace of old iron,' while 'The mineral is red here / against the cliffs' and the sea becomes 'a color of choice / you call in choices.' The ground itself is unstable, with sand 'not solid' and 'shoulder's' that 'are the best quick to drift,' all carried off 'with laughter, often?!?' The page closes on a quiet impasse: the speaker can go there alone but 'could never leave / with you om a rowboat,' so freedom is vivid but ultimately solitary.