Page 61
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Cement, iron, steel, and the descent below ground turn work into a willed passage through places most people cannot bear to see.
The page defines work as a practical, almost ritual movement through cement, iron, steel, height, and underground space. The final handwritten continuation, 'not to let it go', makes willingness feel like grip, endurance, and refusal to release the work itself.
Work is rendered as material craft and vertical labor: 'Make the way of cement', 'with iron and steel', going 'All the way from the ground / And up to places no one else / willl be,, and back below ground'. The poem dignifies it as access to what others cannot bear -- 'places most can't hold on to see' -- and resolves on grip rather than reward: 'It's work with a will / with a willingness / not to let it go'.