Page 23

By Jack Joseph Smith

The nuclear and the mystic striking human vices from the societies Equally are garlanded by the replacement of non human ones Evidently mankind is perceived as offended by the deepness in the brain So the scientific is sent objectively underground Quietly missing the results of their projects Through the tunnel no soldier needs a spiritual crises Explains both the satisfied army And the individual revolutionary Coming to a place where the complete universe Contains justice in the middle of passion. It ie easential to point ourselves out back to where the myth began; while seeing all our power in its strange marriage of geometry and guilt, gazing ever with the assistance of glass, actually has us ostensibility on strings.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The poem says modern systems turn science, war, and revolt into puppeted forms of power unless people return to the place where myth began.

The complete universe containing justice in the middle of passion briefly offers a center the earlier institutions lack. But that possibility is threatened by the marriage of geometry and guilt, a phrase that makes power seem mathematically organized and morally diseased at once. The final image of being on strings gives the whole argument a puppet-like helplessness.

Claude

Variant of the 'nuclear and mystic' poem from page 13, with a softened middle that imports justice into passion.

Where page 13 left mankind on strings, this version reaches toward a resolution — 'the complete universe / Contains justice in the middle of passion'. That small edit changes the poem's temperature; the second take is less diagnostic and more confessional. Holding both versions in the manuscript lets the reader see the poet deciding how bleak he wants to stay.