Page 25

By Jack Joseph Smith

The color of the pasture changed, different than natural and we knew the mines were all the way into our houses now strange and as sleek as what frightened birds must see and we saw the livestock sink and the swamp had been so much lower with geese in a dream and ducks damned we flatfoot on the medow as sucked rice and what was green isn't even now brown and we had always know the land had to be deep for it produced us when Grandpa told them to leave those streams alone cause we already have an anthracite and listen to the revine's and the mules and our favorite half mules and there fearlessness against bogging slowly with hoves you pull out more today it's wrong than yesterday means something and walk from the sky if you love it enough and walk from the mountain on a honeymoon and walk from the slop as a hunter

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The altered pasture becomes proof that mining has entered the house itself, dragging livestock, swamp, family labor, and honeymoon vision into the same damaged landscape.

What was once natural has become sleek and frightening, as if industrial change has learned how to pass for beauty. Grandpa's warning about the streams returns as belated wisdom in a place already remade by anthracite, sinking animals, and slow bogging. The handwritten 'it's wrong' interrupts the movement forward, while the closing passage from sky to mountain to slope keeps walking through the ruined ground anyway, as if love and hunting still require passing directly through the contamination.

Claude

Industrial change has learned to pass for nature: 'The color of the pasture changed, different than / natural,' 'the mines were all the way / into our houses now strange and as sleek' while 'we saw the livestock sink.' Grandpa's warning 'to leave those / streams alone cause we already have an anthracite' returns as belated wisdom. The mules and 'favorite half mules and there fearlessness against / bogging' anchor the lament, the handwritten 'it's wrong' cutting across the closing walk 'from the sky,' 'from the mountain,' 'from the slop as a hunter.'