Page 27

By Jack Joseph Smith

For we are the last of loss The close up, we wore the clothes who waited, waiting at the top of the hill, right where years go to tumbling set in our seconds & sorrow, And thinking again we went and swore Sink into a myth, even more than lovers we found the working for divinity, together being the cross at intersect, our lives fighting to find favor, bequesting by stars and books, and all good things, never permitting the world to End, for we and those as of us carry love and sight in the mouth of wildness, while we defend our own.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The page is elegiac and communal, framing love, loss, years tumbling into sorrow, lovers finding the working for divinity, and wildness as shared labor at a crossing point.

This is one of the collection's most sustained handwritten lyrics. The scan-backed corrections make the page more collective and active: the speakers go, swear, find work, seek favor, and carry love and sight while defending their own.

Claude

One of the collection's softest, most sustained pages: a single handwritten stanza of communal devotion that begins 'For we are the last of loss' and waits 'at the top / of the hill, right where years / go to tumbling set in our seconds / & sorrow.' Love becomes labor and theology - lovers who 'found the working / for divinity, together being the / cross at intersect,' 'fighting to find favor, bequesting / by stars and books' - and the stanza ends in protective resolve: 'never permitting the world to / End ... we ... carry / love and sight in the mouth of wildness, / while we defend our own.' This is a handwritten page, scan-reviewed, with the visible reading preserved over uncertain normalization.