Page 19

By Jack Joseph Smith

Shame Is Hard Where to be wrong and wound out of weakness: Thick with time: I would kill my mate for an insult, while I would not cut a willow for firewood When you actually look at the end once, you never look again Every glance has gone past the dragon Swallowed up by the universe: God and Earth are a place: You can hear a hum, for awhile you can watch it too All of thou may never study your voice, it came and went so fast Mistakes make adventure impossible, yet Don't listen to those who talk about being whole: Seperate yourself so that thought is your way. Tie it to us if you can, the knowledge of a second, or a sound is the gift that keeps hard shame away

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Shame appears as a wound in perception, where insult, mortality, and self-division are held off only by a second kind of knowledge.

The page turns shame into a discipline of attention: once the end has been seen, ordinary glances are swallowed into dragon, universe, God, and Earth. Its corrective advice is not wholeness but separation, a second knowledge or sound that keeps hard shame away.

Claude

'Shame Is Hard' opens on disproportionate violence - 'I would kill my mate for an insult, / while I would not cut a willow for firewood' - and a vision so final it forecloses repetition: 'When you actually look at the end once, / you never look again.' Glances get 'Swallowed up by the universe,' where 'God and Earth are a place' you can hear as 'a hum.' Against the counsel of wholeness ('Don't listen to those who talk about being whole') the poem prescribes division - 'Seperate yourself so that thought is your way' - and names 'the knowledge of a second, or a sound' as 'the gift that keeps hard shame away.' Source spelling 'Seperate' is preserved.