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By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Solitary travel teaches love of women, recalls ten meaningful years of flight, and sees the lost as people beaten and bent long before the fall.
The opening turns independence into perception: being alone lets desire become observation rather than possession. The winding way to hell and the call to come back give the poem a rescuing impulse, though it never pretends rescue is easy. The final lines refuse simple blame by locating ruin earlier, in beatings and distortions that happened before collapse became visible.
Solitude is reframed as perception, not loneliness: 'You don't know that you love all women / until you start out on your own', because being alone lets you 'watch, look into / life' -- though 'alone is not what you have to do / all the time.' A rescuing impulse runs through 'I watched them walk down the winding / way to hell' and the call to 'come back.' The close refuses easy blame by locating ruin early: the lost were 'people, / that were lost / But I knew they had been beaten, / and turned out way before they fell.'