Page 30

By Jack Joseph Smith

He cut his ladies splendor with cowboys in wide oak trees bringing oceans to the desert knowing that there is no such number as seven A candle as a helm with nothing done Birds and fish and snakes While wanders die on jib and noose Possibly thinking of the white man's fear to stay And the Black man's fear to go So sirs he has said do your best Avoid the yardarm, avoid the yoke No part of the deal when long line Has a motor or main sail down turned magic against the breeze for dancing Open the bildge the planks will whine Sheet yourself this terrible sea We have invited sharks on board Against the rush, leave the technologic We have a stance to make from underneath Do not you hear the Legands of the dead singing yea

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The page mixes women, cowboys, oceans, desert, candles, and the denial of the number seven into a deliberately mythic field.

This is one of the collection's more fully incantatory pages. It does not argue so much as stack symbolic objects until they produce their own pressure.

Claude

A consolidation page that gathers the book's recurring images into one continuous sea-passage: 'He cut his ladies splendor with cowboys / in wide oak trees bringing oceans to the desert / knowing that there is no such number as seven,' the white man's 'fear to stay' and the Black man's 'fear to go,' the refusal of 'the yardarm' and 'the yoke.' Here it tips into command and danger - 'Open the bildge the planks will whine,' 'Sheet yourself this terrible sea,' 'We have invited sharks on board' - and ends by daring the reader, 'Do not you hear the Legands of the dead singing yea,' welding the scattered earlier drafts into a single voyage.