Page 48

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Govener's Mother She, silver haired of a prim 80 some And from boudoir this morn Lacked thee occasion scorn And she, of aquired servants grace Called no maid come She'd had her loves at 21 Around the world she'd won Captains 9 With no need of Valentine Sniffs aristocratic nose of summation She knew with who Her age must dine Along the ridge of Oregon plains would woo But then good youth understands lifes time As would be for thine her people to tell Though man pioneer Bostonian had plans Never was she to be Mc Called La scave Believe she knew the song of the saved She'd seen Dan thirst on prarrie waves While fortune found her riled in Portland now She stepped out No lipstick, yet with rouge on cheekbones tilt from nature's chisel Humph! A splendid day for sunlit usage "And with no drizzle I'll pedestrian put my shinbone right sprout." We walked from the Court House steps Wounded Knee still not whipped And we were newspaper revolutionaries A food and clothing haul the F.B.I. cut to a short trip

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A cleaner version of 'The Govener's Mother' satirizes an elderly privileged woman before tying her Portland walk to Wounded Knee and an F.B.I.-shortened aid trip.

The page keeps its satire close to social surfaces: hair, boudoir, servants, rouge, and aristocratic bearing. The final turn to Wounded Knee makes that private refinement answer to public violence and political containment.

Claude

An aged, aristocratic Govener's Mother is sketched in wry, ornate portraiture, her past romances and pioneer-era pride set against a present walk through Portland that collides with Wounded Knee and F.B.I. news.

The poem's mock-elevated diction - aquired servants grace and aristocratic nose of summation - builds an ironic distance from its subject even while admiring her. The final stanzas pivot sharply from her private vanity to public unrest, letting the speaker's newspaper-revolutionary stroll expose a generational and political gap the woman's world cannot absorb.