Page 39

By Jack Joseph Smith

Stare in the night; glance in the day I caught it when brilliance turned to blackness, and I lost it before it went the other way around I got Cherokee and I got railroad; it's about what will tie your soul in knots As in the scars of Caim are not known to be blessed by Abraham,, but it is certain, that they have been submitted R.E.M. has a line in a song, e about thos who deny the laws of chance: I never thought I could make blood go anywhere I wanted As if I were less than not And I did not say I saw it, the vision, wher it flew away from me; but be sure I saw it,

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This variant of the night-stare poem pushes harder on chance, blood, ancestry, and a handwritten self-diminishing phrase before ending in a stubborn insistence on the escaped vision.

The repeated material makes the poem feel like an obsession rather than a revision, as though the speaker must keep circling the same sighting to keep it alive. What matters is not mastery but testimony: blood cannot be fully directed, chance cannot be denied, and the handwritten 'As if I were less than not' turns that lack of control inward. The final insistence carries both pride and helplessness, which is what gives the poem its force.

Claude

Near-duplicate of 35, Stare in the night, with the REM line and the blood-go-anywhere claim reasserted.