Without Blindness

By Jack Joseph Smith

I bought the sixty six cheavy for sixty five dollars I had five kids, one white beside me, who I was definately in love with going across the West End Bridge, a high Pittsburgh bridge without a lock, without a stay I loved the girl Wallace so much it hurt; she was about fifteen and I was twenty three I can't remember who was sitting shotgun over from Wallace, but that she was negro, and across the back seat alll three girls were black also The black girls were a little younger than Wallace, but then again maybe Wallace was sixteen, maybe Wallace was even seventeen The others were younger though, it more than seems They were beautiful too, each one precious, but they were black and safe from me and my new found theatrical ways, And if it wasn't for the fear of Heaven, for Patty I would have gone over Wrong and right is not about the way the wind blows

Original Scan

Page 37

AI Interpretation

GPT

A charged memory poem in which race, desire, youth, and moral fear all crowd into one Pittsburgh crossing.

Claude

A confessional memory poem narrated with documentary flatness: 'I bought the sixty six cheavy for sixty five dollars,' five kids in the car crossing 'the West End Bridge, / a high Pittsburgh bridge without a lock, without a stay.' The speaker, twenty-three, names a painful infatuation with a girl named Wallace, 'about fifteen,' and the black girls riding with them, then admits the bridge's pull: 'if it wasn't for the fear of Heaven, / for Patty I would have gone over.'

The poem's title becomes its method - to see 'without blindness' is to refuse to look away from desire that frightens the speaker himself. The exact ages and prices ('sixty five dollars,' 'fifteen,' 'twenty three') give the confession a ledger's honesty, while the careful, circling uncertainty about Wallace's age - 'maybe Wallace was sixteen, maybe Wallace was / even seventeen' - registers a conscience trying to revise the math after the fact. The 'high Pittsburgh bridge without a lock, without a stay' is the poem's quiet center: an unguarded edge that doubles as the threshold of suicide or transgression, the place where 'I would have gone over.' What holds him back is named bluntly - 'the fear of Heaven' - and the closing line refuses to soften that into wisdom: 'Wrong and right is not about the way the wind blows.' Morality here is not weathered or relative; it is the one fixed rail on a bridge that has none.