Page 35

By Jack Joseph Smith

Akin 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 of 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, I am the first white Indian there ever was, And thats why Jesus would say there is no differance between him, Marco Polo and James Joyce, you know what I mean Pittsburgh, Pa, he really would say that. .

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page turns sorrow into swagger, mysticism, cowboy identity, racial self-mythology, and a dream of standing outside ordinary responsibility.

The restored ending makes the boast stranger and more local. It wants freedom from duty, but that posture keeps circling Pittsburgh, Jesus, history, and the speaker's need to be forgiven.

Claude

'Akin' is a self-mythologizing boast built on the Whitman-like 'I am' anaphora, but its bravado keeps doubling back into need. Sorrow here is paradoxically generative - 'My sorrow does not send me back into sorrow' - and the speaker claims a charmed idleness: 'I am the cowboy dream, I am the wrangler / I have left responsiblity', 'has gained fame for doing nothing', 'the star, / that never had to try'. Yet the grand titles keep undercutting themselves - 'I am at best serving at a soup kitchin', 'I only / start to stop the beginning of the end' - and the boast turns confessional with 'forgive me, I am the first white Indian there ever was'. The closing yokes Jesus, 'Marco Polo and James Joyce' as interchangeable, then drops back into the same Pittsburgh refrain, 'I mean Pittsburgh, Pa, he really would say that'. The key line 'dreams do not work backwards' anchors the swagger to a real loss. Source spellings 'gultch', 'responsiblity', 'metphor', 'kitchin', 'Loard', 'intellagence', and 'differance' are preserved.