Page 78

By Jack Joseph Smith

Loss Of The Sun Time and place didn't make a differance Will the rifle he was pulling wasn't wilful It was all her he saw The police were on their way to kill her anyway She just happened to be a moon on film Needed to be exquisit with terror and tongue The quick comfort of violence done The rejection of sorrow never known No to the dream that had been the same Once to begin with no to straw and gold Tougher than any two strong trees you've seem Exactly on the Earth this movement If you were not at the right place at the right time, thought is good enough More than us held to it, a trick om way to knowing Only death makes God longer against the Sun Housing and shade or both staring alone

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page turns a violent scene into a meditation on chance, perception, and how sorrow gets translated into cosmic scale.

The poem keeps moving between the immediate and the abstract. Its strangeness comes from how quickly rifle, moon, thought, and God occupy the same field.

Claude

The cleanest 'Loss Of The Sun,' completing the sequence in evenly double-spaced lines. It revises the rifle's intent -- 'Will the rifle he was pulling wasn't wilful' -- keeps the chance framing, 'Time and place didn't make a differance,' and the doomed woman, 'The police were on their way to kill her anyway / She just happened to be a moon on film.' The terror-aesthetics return ('Needed to be exquisit with terror and tongue,' 'The quick comfort of violence done') alongside the recurring abstractions of sorrow, dream, and 'straw and gold.' The decisive turn is to contingency and thought: 'If you were not at the right place / at the right time, thought is good enough / More than us held to it, a trick om way to knowing.' It closes on the same cosmic-and-lonely note: 'Only death makes God longer against the Sun / Housing and shade or both staring alone.' Source spellings 'differance,' 'exquisit,' 'seem' (for seen), and 'om' are kept as written.