By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A bottomless cavern opens beneath the old stories of beauty, and the speaker answers that abyss with self-condemnation and a stubborn memory of angels.
The poem begins in shock, as if the scale of the void has exceeded anything the speakers had prepared themselves to face. Beauty belongs to an earlier story in which "she" began perfectly, but that ideal is now shadowed by the line "No one worse than I." The closing claim about angels does not erase guilt; it gives the speaker just enough witness to keep the soul's questioning from collapsing into pure emptiness.
nclor / cavern: no one worse than I in this world, but I have known angels when I have seen them. Doubt with humility.