By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A stripped-down ethics poem in which labor, death, and the wish for something better are held against stark rural witness.
A spare collective credo that pairs 'Our work' with 'Out solitude' and the grand claim that 'We cross the stars', even while 'We have less of the Sun / Than others'. The ethics are stated bluntly - 'we care about / right and wrong', we won't 'give our lives up / for which is worse' - and the poem ends in stark witness: 'I have seen living things die / Humans included', refusing even to 'chase him, or wish for something / better', closing on 'the beak of a hawk / at my window'.
The 'we' carries scarcity and pride at once: less sun than others, but star-crossing reach, as if poverty and cosmic scope were the same condition. The moral core is a refusal - not to trade life 'for which is worse' - which reads less like resignation than a hard-won limit on what the speaker will surrender. The most striking move is the flat report of death 'Humans included' followed by the decision not to chase or wish; grief is met with stillness rather than pursuit. The final hawk's beak 'at my window' lands the abstraction in a single predatory image - the wild pressing right up to the glass of a house that has already decided not to wish for anything better.