By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The Song watches a spring flower in unlivable wildness, then names America as a long rough history in which the swallow, the hawlk, settlers, killing, and cheating were never accidental.
The flower first appears as something beautiful but already placed in terrain hostile to ordinary living. Swallow and hawlk keep the sky active, yet the poem refuses any innocent natural cycle by linking flight to invasion and conquest. The force of the argument lies in intention: conquerors and settlers knew what they were doing from the beginning.
'The Song' sets beauty in hostile ground -- 'Watch a flower when it is spring / In a place so wild you can't live' -- then turns to history: 'Then take it; America', which 'is rough'. It refuses any innocent natural cycle, binding flight to invasion: 'The swallow and the hawlk', a 'swarm... never sudden', and the hard claim of intention -- 'every single / conquer and invader and settler / knew what they where doing, and still / do from the beginning, with killing and / cheating, all strainst power'. The line breaks off mid-thought on that 't'.