By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A dreamed invitation, snake-like motion, swords, pimps, fists, and a horrible gate turn new love into fearful threshold crossing through a crowded hall.
Falling is denied at the start, which matters because the movement that follows is chosen and dreamlike rather than accidental. The new love is immediately tested by an environment of blades, hustlers, and spectacle, so desire has to pass through menace to continue. The threshold and hall feel ceremonial, but the fear remains bodily and blunt.
The poem first denies a literal fall - 'I don't mean I fell over / Like fallen over something / like a fence' - to insist the descent is dream and choice. The clipped exchange 'Do you want to go / Yes' launches a 'Snake like' passage 'with swords,' the beloved leading 'through that horrible gate.' Menace crowds in as census: 'The pimps were everypla ce / One half a hundred / everywhere you looked.' The speaker's fear is grounded in a fighter's plain limit - 'I was scarred; / caause I fight with my fists' - useless against blades, so crossing the 'threshold' into 'the hall' becomes a dread the body can feel but not win.