Page 45

By Jack Joseph Smith

When we are not the injury in the series of skins we trade, plants and children like Dylan Thomas, won't confuse accidents with inquisitiveness And I have unblessed personally passed like pawn shops, one million youngsters who enjoy extreams with electricity; and madness is not just berserk like a shot bird While it is of no great matter T. S. Eliot, that we do not hear the wish the world sends when it waves; as modern speed has no power when it pulls Now let anger get an ahorizon on guilt, letting alonelessness create souls; until the battle in civilization, makes worried insects out of eternity's Some say violence is not listening to the proper drum Yet wisdom watches the hawk of the entire storm, that draws populations like paper into hiding as halves On overlearning wonder we trot a nice down step; our symptoms ignoring hell cast to outsiders lost in heaves Yet with no clash, as in confrontation; even swift lust, like out of a fox, finds no music, or win of heir

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A chain of aphoristic images portrays modern violence and speed as forms of failed attention that shrink human feeling into panic, halves, and noise.

The poem ranges from plants and children to Dylan Thomas, pawn shops, electricity, T. S. Eliot, insects, hawks, drums, and foxes, building a world where culture and instinct keep colliding. Its moral center lies in listening: violence is linked to missing the proper drum, while wisdom watches the whole storm instead of surrendering to speed or lust. The page keeps arguing that alienation and overcharged modern life deform perception before they erupt into action.

Claude

Continuing 'The Tower', an aphoristic chain names 'Dylan Thomas' and 'T. S. Eliot', asks to 'let anger get an ahorizon on guilt, / letting alonelessness create souls', warns that 'madness is not just berserk like a shot bird', and ends on a fox whose 'swift lust... / finds no music, / or win of heir'.

The page argues that modern speed and violence are failures of attention - 'modern speed has no power when it pulls', and 'violence is not listening to the proper drum' while 'wisdom watches the hawk of the entire storm'. Its key turn is to want anger made functional rather than discharged: it asks anger for 'an ahorizon on guilt', a perspective rather than a release, and proposes that 'alonelessness', not communion, is what 'create[s] souls'. The closing fox image is the warning the sequence keeps circling: lust or conflict 'with no clash, / as in confrontation' yields neither 'music' nor inheritance ('win of heir'), so action that avoids real confrontation comes to nothing. Source forms 'extreams', 'ahorizon', 'alonelessness', and 'heaves' are kept as the scan shows them.