By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
After considerable wrong, the speaker imagines deliberate wrongdoing, a woman without fences, and the hard limit of being believed just enough.
The opening distinction between accidental wrongdoing and intentional harm gives the whole poem its uneasy conscience. The woman leads him into an open space "without fences," a place that sounds free but offers no protection from consequence. Her believing that he has told the truth becomes the only available grace, and the ending accepts that coming back or not coming back changes nothing essential.
A conscience-poem that opens by measuring guilt against intent: having done 'considerable / wrong,' the speaker asks the reader to imagine 'what it / would be like if you would have done / it on purpose.' The scene opens onto an exposed, unprotected love - 'There in the Sun / without fences' - where the only grace on offer is being believed: 'she thinks / You have told her / the truth / that's enough.' The flat ending accepts that nothing more can be earned: 'If you do, or don't come back / That's the best / You're gonna get.' The handwritten correction to 'Sun' is preserved from the scan.