Page 308
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
An old man's thought about youth, truth, poets, and manual typewriters turns mistakes into the very condition of staying young.
Truth stands in one place, the poem says, but reaching it still requires effort from fist or brain, as if conviction alone never settles the matter. Youth is treated as something exclusive and difficult to keep, except in song writers, poets, and manual typewriters. That last comparison is exact and funny, because typewriters preserve youth not by purity but by error.
The old-man-was-you reflection: truth stands in one place, 'truth is that wrong is so.' Youth has an inclusion, 'excepting song writers and poets / When they begin and end at the same place / And of course manual typewriters / All of which / Are made of mistakes.'