By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem gathers identity into blessing, linking the mother's Gaelic gift with creative history and love for Siobhan.
After the harder material around fathers and formation, these lines feel ceremonious and calm. The mother's gift is named as something ancient and quiet that can guide temperament, so inheritance becomes enabling rather than wounding. Ending with love for Siobhan and her consequences makes affection sound accepting, as if love includes what follows from the beloved's life.
Closing of the Siobhan sequence: maternal Gaelic replaces the absent father as inheritance, love for the addressee becomes the act of letting her face her consequences.
The page compresses a long sequence into a small vow. 'Let her smile at her consequences' is the refusal-of-protection that makes the love credible; the speaker won't shield her, which is how he says he respects her. The transfer — from mother's language as gift to the speaker's own 'worldly wings' — does the inheritance work the father couldn't.