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By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
An address to time and wind becomes a struggle against memory, spiritual abandonment, and the fear of being pulled into cold, sinful depths.
The repeated dare wind dare sounds defiant, but it also admits how vulnerable the speaker is to voices, shambles behind, and longing beyond. Silence is paradoxically loud, so the atmosphere presses on the body through cheek, ear, spine, ash, and frozen door. What burns between us is never named directly, which makes the closing sense of separation and guilt feel sharper.
Incantatory night piece with refrain 'Dare wind dare', the speaker asking the wind to touch him where spirit has withdrawn.
The poem uses the refrain as a breath-setter rather than a chorus, and the spaces between stanzas are where the breath is taken. 'Resting my ear from the silence so loud' is the phrase that pins the poem to the body; the silence is not peaceful. The close — 'Burning between us' — lets the poem be a small erotic address to weather, which is what it has been pretending not to be.