Page 47

By Jack Joseph Smith

Thought fanomial aspect of fire, The ingulfing The taking without quench, this is thought The times not told about, the licence of gossip Now you see, to late to hurt Acknowledgement as steady as iron, the force, the hammer Clear your dangerous and obnoxious brain, it is clear that you are alone; its containment is never being done singles nothing, whitchcraft, or taking your job, you don't care, humor is not snide, joy is going on Make every trail a wilderness place Nature will reach the city as a grace Don't let the end take you apart Stare down like rain the violent As strong as the old, good as country lace The masters are dead when they become our youth Men keep the keys when there farm is taken from them Thought is the period where there is no ground for assult Eyes in the ice are what you already know by instinct Courousness is first and leaves you last Give the rest a chance, it's your thought

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Thought is figured as fire, force, gossip, grace, and violence, with curiosity surviving where certainty and mastery fail.

The page treats thought as consuming force, civic gossip, wilderness, instinct, and unfinished containment. The cancellations and inserted force make the argument feel provisional: thought is both what threatens the speaker and what gives the rest a chance.

Claude

Thought is named as 'the ingulfing', a fire 'taking without quench', and the poem keeps turning it against its own thinker: 'Clear your dangerous and obnoxious brain' precedes 'it is clear that you are alone'. It then opens outward -- 'Make every trail a wilderness place', 'Nature will reach the city as a grace' -- before the gnomic claim that 'The masters are dead when they become our youth' and the closing handoff 'Give the rest a chance, / it's your thought'. This reading remains provisional because the page transcript is OCR-uncertain and the handwriting (including the inserted 'the force') is unresolved.