Page 46

By Jack Joseph Smith

When God is gone, prison and claustrophobia, can reach fear far past the whip; to do what is necessary for worlds of their own Until no scene, no life, could be adjusted, Earl Flynn had his timepiece set wrong; and by technicians who were tired, the symphony's masters were taped Because it is dawn when the dammed and the do=gooders, have leaving in common; remaining like a judge, the bear has already found areas away from their ashes And the blues go from cords to feathers, because the instrument Earth when with air playing tricks, lies quicker than both ways for the rich But the tower has no use for talk or truth or magic; and decides to begin and to end, as drama does in a closet With a sea of one bird, with no mention of chirp or of wave Yes desire for quiet not For nerves like shellfish in a can, are roaring with a laughter, as strong as it is strange.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A turbulent collage of judges, towers, wealth, and exhausted technicians turns modern life into a claustrophobic drama where the wish for quiet is overwhelmed by dread and nervous laughter.

The lines move by abrupt jumps, but they keep circling the same pressure: institutions and authorities feel false, worn out, and strangely theatrical. Dawn links the damned and the do-gooders, which flattens moral difference into a shared emptiness, while earth, music, and drama all seem manipulated or exhausted. The closing image of shellfish nerves roaring with laughter gives the whole piece a trapped, almost grotesque energy.

Claude

The Tower sequence, part three: prison and claustrophobia reach fear past the whip, the tower decides to begin and end 'as drama does in a closet'.

The poem's tightest line is 'when God is gone' — it doesn't argue the claim, it stipulates it, and then builds out from there. Errol Flynn and Earth-as-instrument get dropped into the same stanza without apology; the tower's isolation makes the collapse of registers sound ordinary. The last image — 'a sea of one bird' — is the page's most surprising figure; the ocean shrinks to the size of a single witness.