By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Even the lovers of solitude keep searching for a mind like their own, as if loneliness still contains a stubborn hope for companionship.
The fragment is broken, but its core contrast is clear: aloneness is chosen and yet not sufficient. Madmen on beach or mountain still look outward for a ghostly counterpart, which gives the walk a strange mix of isolation and longing. The leap toward stars and laughter beyond meditation makes that search feel both cosmic and unstable.
'The Long Walk': three lines on madmen on beaches and mountains still looking for another like mind, with laughter farther than meditation.
The poem calls bluff on the hermit romance. Even the most deliberately alone person is sweeping the horizon for company. The suggestion that the search is 'a military way to the stars' pushes the image into something harder and less pastoral — solitude as campaign, not escape.