Page 24

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Gaze Once into the four suns I saw silent with joy,and sorrow shearing God away as well, The cross of light, that takes you to the end, bleak and hurting yet has one in the knot of yourself, For there your vision can go no further, it is watching space come to you gigantic without love while you love it Is there,a place you can crumble before the suns turn To moons, Throwing you with the elk lay down before you as graciousness in tundra and the carraboo shimmer like myths way over the plain and the mountains call down with litteral yelling You can go to any city and turn your back for your own good To loose this myajesty would for two in love be and the seperation of kiss for ever any again Yes it could make that, Surely it could do that Why would it not When something, is more powerful than you

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This alternate or revised page of 'The Gaze' reduces the poem to a harsher meditation on beauty, separation, surrender, motion, and overwhelming force.

The language here is more compressed and blunt than the preceding page. The restored elk-line insertion gives the crumbling scene more thrown movement, while the restored ending makes the loss of majesty feel like a damaged love-separation before the poem turns back to overpowering force.

Claude

A third 'Gaze' draft, denser and more run-together. The 'four suns' and 'cross of light, that takes you to the end' return, 'watching / space come to you gigantic without love while you love it.' The elk and 'carraboo shimmer like myths' over the plain, and the speaker offers an escape clause: 'You can go to any city and turn your back for your own good.' To lose 'this myajesty' is 'the seperation of kiss for ever any again.' It ends in clipped, almost stammering affirmation - 'Yes it could make that, / Surely it could do that, / Why would it not' - before conceding 'something, / is more powerful than you.' This reading remains provisional because the page is OCR-uncertain and flagged needs-followup.