Page 10

By Jack Joseph Smith

clensed! This was the way WE wanted the Earth Scattered with what WE would rid ourselves of There where there is no line through the ovel No curve noticed before the beyond WE wanted ourselves in ashes equally, To that almost as good is this Earth, AS the slaughter While only sight can get to the magical rocks "While When I was a child I wanted to be the Saint, with the sword" Above the Bible, literally in the clouds; Those on fire worshiped Again, equally, with the ones in peace Dence is the population of the mind Therefore slash through all obsticals For that one view of yourself

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This revised page keeps reworking purity, childhood, sight, and slaughter into one unstable creed, but the restored corrections make its argument more deliberate.

The updated text reads less like OCR noise and more like active revision. The repeated `WE`, the correction to `ovel`, the turn toward `AS the slaughter`, and the restored `Again, equally` all make the page feel like a poem arguing with itself about collective desire, violence, and sanctity rather than merely sketching them.

Claude

A second pass at 'clensed!', now with an exclamation in the title and the first person pushed harder: 'This was the way WE wanted the Earth,' 'WE wanted ourselves in ashes equally.' The saint figure gains a wish - 'When I was a child I wanted to be the Saint, / with the sword' - and the worship is 'literally in the clouds.' It ends on the command 'Therefore slash through all obsticals / For that one view of yourself,' making self-vision the violent goal. This reading remains provisional because the page is OCR-uncertain and flagged needs-followup.