Akin

By Jack Joseph Smith

My sorrow does not send me back into sorrow My sorrow is so strange and mystic it does not stray To leave a leaf or pass a path; a quarry given a gultch taken, I am blessed to be beneath To look up and go again is my gain This care for me is of one who has not lost I am the cowboy dream, I am the wrangler I have left responsiblity, I am the one who, has gained fame for doing nothing I am the absolute infinity, a power, for the loss of my own fear, the star, that never had to try I see my own and the rest go by They work and seek, aside my flashing metphor, I am at best serving at a soup kitchin, I only start to stop the beginning of the end I leap my soul into the Loard fr'you For I am the one who knows, that dreams do not work backwards I am the guest of the song, I am the lost in the wars, I am the bird they have finally found intellagence from, forgive me

Original Scan

Page 36

AI Interpretation

GPT

This poem stages a grand self-mythology of sorrow, fame, and forgiveness, balancing swagger with spiritual hunger.

Claude

The opening line's paradox — sorrow that does not return you to sorrow — announces a speaker who has transformed grief into a form of motion. The sorrow is 'strange and mystic' because it has been lived with long enough to become generative rather than paralyzing, fuel for the swagger and spiritual hunger that follow.

The poem balances self-mythology with genuine vulnerability. The speaker knows his sorrow is strange, which means he has observed it from outside — and that double vision (feeling and watching the feeling) is the poem's real subject.