By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
In North Nevada, a war-returned presence appears in a double take, beyond belief and stronger than dreams, standing before the speaker with permanent, unbookish force.
The handwritten location gives the apparition a physical place before the typed poem turns it into an enduring presence. The voice keeps circling between the person seen and the life already lived through war, travel, and disillusion. Great French books are dismissed not because they are worthless, but because a real presence has more authority than literature at that moment.
Titled by the handwritten 'The Gold I seen / in North Nevada' plus typed 'Sight', the poem is an apparition met with a 'doubble took.' War frames the figure -- 'You have been / to war and back / And somehow / Still doing it' -- and she arrives 'Beyound belief', leaving the speaker 'crushed' and past dreams. The closing distinction is the point: not the notice owed to 'great French books / but a presence that stood / infront of you / that would never go away.'