By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page moves from the labor of thought into the handwritten heading "Without A Sexton," then imagines sailors, stars, a clock-centered galaxy, blindness, and the impossibility of making another one.
The opening sounds like a speaker still working after declaring himself finished. The handwritten title or heading introduces a ritual absence, as if the cosmic scene lacks someone to tend its bell, grave, or clock. By the end, creation is not triumphant but exhausting: the galaxy can be seen, timed, and suffered, but not remade.
The page opens on labor that continues past defeat -- 'I am doing this, this thought, this / labor; even if it shows that I am / finished' -- then the handwritten heading 'Without A / Sexton' marks a ritual absence, no one left to tend bell or grave. The cosmic close makes creation exhausting rather than glorious: 'sailors have seen / There are only two stars / at the same time', the galaxy's 'center is a clock', and it 'makes / You go blind / and tired / cause you / can not make / another one'.