By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem imagines true seeing as silent, downward, and incompatible with domination or direct possession of God.
Sight is measured against a bird and against wordless wisdom, so vision here is receptive rather than declarative. Water that dosen't make war and the downward slant suggest humility, gravity, and peace as conditions for truth. The final claim that no-eye that has caught God can bear the sun makes revelation feel blinding and distancing at once.
Short wisdom lyric: sight should pass through without a word; the eye that caught God can't bear the sun.
The poem treats vision as an act of restraint — refusing to name is the discipline. The line 'The water that dosen't make war / Is found at a downward slant' gives that restraint a physical correlate, which is how the page avoids being a fortune-cookie. The closing image is the page's strongest move: having seen God is described as a disability relative to daylight.