By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
After rhyme and the ark of seeing time are finished, figures stand ridged on the moonward far side, black specks that resolve into upside-down faces.
The poem starts as if verse and vision have already completed their task, then discovers a harsher afterimage on the far side. Shadows join other shadows until bodies look like black specks fixed almost into concrete, stripped of movement and warmth. Only a proper view restores them as faces, though even then they appear upside down, as if orientation itself has failed.
The poem starts as if vision were already complete -- rhyme 'finished' with 'the ark of seeing time' -- then finds a harsher afterimage on the far side, where 'we are on the other side / joining shadows to shadow.' Stalled and 'more and more ridged', the figures shrink to 'Black specks / Almost natural / as if to concrete.' The turn lands on orientation failing: 'any proper view / shows us as faces / that are upside down.'