Page 28

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Love Call Cross as close as you can to danger Be as many times you have know you were dead If you have once rise up and sing love If you have not you are unworthy of my words If you are a man in a childs mind, or already finding that If protected and unsure Then youth take no part in me I speak with no differance in the fire Old and young the same flame and flicker I care not for aldults who lie about the young and I care less about the young who copy the same You think things have changed, then die and come back Listen to the madmen, this time in the music, someday a women, or a man my dears, will get you over it

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Love is granted only to those who have risked death, while music and madness become the true initiations into adult feeling.

The page makes love a severe initiation rather than a comfort: danger, death, fire, age, music, and madness decide who is worthy of the call. Its critique cuts both directions, against adults who lie about youth and against youth who merely copy those lies.

Claude

'The Love Call' issues love as a dare and a test: 'Cross as close as you can to danger,' 'If you have once rise up and sing love / If you have not you are unworthy of my words.' The speaker bars the merely 'protected and unsure' - 'Then youth take no part in me' - and insists on a single flame across ages: 'I speak with no differance in the fire / Old and young the same flame and flicker.' His scorn cuts both ways: 'I care not for aldults who lie about the young / and I care less about the young who copy the same.' The close offers a brutal initiation and a glimmer of rescue: 'You think things have changed, / then die and come back,' until 'someday a women, or a man my dears, / will get you over it.' Source spellings 'childs,' 'differance,' and 'aldults' are preserved.