Page 26
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A handwritten 'And' opens a passage of cattleman and plowmaker imagery, drowned animals, neglected town water, and a final love speech that turns separation into a claim of shared beauty.
The handwritten additions make the page feel revised in the act of address: 'And' links it to what came before, while 'of little gifts' turns the cattleman image toward exchange and inheritance. The typed body moves through agrarian and flooded-industrial imagery before shifting into direct speech. The refusal to find or be found is absolute, but it does not end in nothingness; the closing line preserves a remnant of beauty even after the fight is gone.
Companion to 19, with the formal closing address: We are better, We are something they never thought of, not a speck, an eye, a piece of beauty even when our fight is gone.