Page 20

By Jack Joseph Smith

Maybe he never did hear the legends of the dead singing yes After all there is a stance to make from underneath To leave the technologic and go to wrip the rush Herin inviting the lethal When Don walked into the furnal of my father's ash Where abouts my father was growing to it in his distance I knew that Don was the only one who represented the past Those old days on the Wabash River Let's get torn with where are kids with intercourse Torrent of the parapit, last sight of my rail Will tonight have sea or loss It will be Black Cod better than a whale Yelling atop as henchmen Scrub and a bouy too

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page moves from dead legends and technologic escape into Don's connection with the speaker's father, the Wabash River, and a strange sea image of Black Cod and whale.

The corrected transcript makes the page more elegiac than merely restless. It treats Don as a representative of the past, carrying the father's ash, river memory, and maritime language into one unstable scene.

Claude

Don's walk into the furnace of the father's ash on the Wabash, with 'Black Cod better than a whale' and 'yelling atop as henchmen' — the crematory moment the book keeps returning to.