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Addressing `MORTY`, the speaker says love has altered his sense of beauty, unsettled his old confidence as a poet, and left him resisting a different kind of submission.

The restored closing lines matter because they change the page from a brief confession into a small vow. `Wonder drips from ME` makes awe bodily, but `My mouth though tight / CAN never be a slave` adds resistance and pride, so the poem becomes both vulnerable and defiant.

A seven-line address to 'MORTY' that runs love and craft together: 'My mind never sliped to beauty / Since I saw you', so 'The world has changed' and 'I AM not good as a poet now.' But the confession turns defiant - 'Wonder drips from ME' and 'My mouth though tight / CAN never be a slave.' Love unsettles the poet's old confidence yet hardens into a refusal of submission. The 'mixed'-band page preserves the spelling 'sliped' and the manuscript's emphatic capitals 'I AM', 'ME', 'CAN'.