Untitled ("Our work")

By Jack Joseph Smith

Our work Out solitude We cross the stars We have less of the Sun Than others But we care about right and wrong We don't thing we should give our lives up for which is worse I have seen living things die Humans included And not even bothering to chase him, or wish for something better I have had the beak of a hawk at my window

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A stripped-down ethics poem in which labor, death, and the wish for something better are held against stark rural witness.

Claude

Two words for a title carry the weight of everything: labor is communal ('our') and central. The poem holds work against death and the wish for something better, finding in stripped-down rural ethics a moral framework needing no elaboration.

The possessive 'our' is the most important word. It refuses individual credit or complaint and insists that work is shared — both solidarity and burden.