Page 26

By Jack Joseph Smith

Kin On the run is not damaged, once again, sorrow can be a good song Don't slight yourself my friend You are as good as anybody elses end Your foot has not a side to be fond or far Listen to yourself after long sleep Wait and watch and run into the middle, of a rainbow, its ends will let you, make a joke in the meadow, because getting there is only the first part of leaving twice The sky and stars are fire taking away form As meladous as a harp without wings Your spirit so silent is the wish of this soft song Again to sing hardly see6n and hardly heard Through this universe, your great choice and subtle thought, has left you alone And speaking is not my forfit My mind would have nothing to do, with gracious gallons of whiskey, if my stomach was for it So Uncle, I'll take your gift and use it Like an heir should And remember in your lonely death In this abstraction Your work without family, was correct with the last of your math

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Sorrow is recast as a good song, and kinship becomes a matter of surviving sleep, weather, rainbow, and departure without surrendering the self.

The page treats kinship as an inheritance of endurance: run, sleep, rainbow, sky, song, whiskey, uncle, gift, and lonely death gather around the effort to use what has been given. The handwritten changes make sorrow usable as song and make the soft song belong to a spirit, while the final shift from this math to your math keeps the inheritance directly addressed.

Claude

'Kin' consoles and instructs at once: 'On the run is not damaged,' 'sorrow can be a good song,' 'Don't slight yourself my friend / You are as good as anybody elses end.' It counsels patience - 'Listen to yourself after long sleep,' run 'into the middle, / of a rainbow' - noting that 'getting / there is only the first part of leaving twice.' The poem then turns to a dying uncle, refusing whiskey ('gracious gallons') and accepting an inheritance instead: 'So Uncle, I'll take your gift and use it / Like an heir should.' The elegy lands on a stark blessing - 'remember in your lonely death / In this abstraction / Your work without family, / was correct with the last of your math.' This reading stays provisional: the page is heavily annotated and needs-followup, with an uncertain right-margin passage. Source spellings 'meladous' and 'see6n' are preserved.