Page 345
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
An empty evening table, unseen recognition, bent trees, and stars in motion turn sorrow into a limit where the speaker wants to become more but cannot travel farther.
The opening refuses hatred and replaces it with crossing over, drinking, and the eerie fact of seeing someone who does not see back. "Chance is a movie" makes fate feel staged and old, especially beside the "old Black ones," as if memory itself is flickering film. Stars doing things and trees bent by wind widen the world just before the final confession of stoppage, where wanting more collides with a body or soul that cannot continue.
'Sorrow': no one coming to the table this evening; we crossed a few, now would be the time to drink. 'Chance is a movie / The old Black ones'; he has stood outside and seen stars do things; wants to be more than there 'but can not go any further.'