Page 66

By Jack Joseph Smith

Before Final Things Begin To Break or with it's wax Clean on the glass the candle sticks, there, caught is your vision so simple, with the flame or as well this look goes the other way Crushed as terror, or happy as released All be the same say the Budist, Thought without when God is a language, rather than the reverse of a dream While only flesh I suppose, is not nonsense Yes, and to be the sea, is deeper than an interest reguardless of appearance, or any arrangement for death I have seen myself walk two ways at the same time, and I have felt salt in strips sing me away, when longing wants to whip me back to where I don't belong When it all begins, let the lesson know, when it ends, it has little to do with you

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page revises the earlier spiritual-material imagery into something harsher, where belonging and punishment are tied together.

The surviving lines give the sense of a poem being actively argued with on the page. Salt, flesh, language, and return all work as pressures against a stable self.

Claude

Before Final Things Begin To Break. A reworked Final Things. Clean on the glass with candle sticks, terror or release, the Buddhist God without language. Only flesh is not nonsense. To be the sea is deeper than an interest. I have seen myself walk two ways at the same time, and felt salt in strips sing me away when longing wants to whip me back to where I do not belong. The ending has little to do with you.