Page 6
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page continues the mirror scene into adjoining domestic rooms, where memory, illness, care, and lingering mischief coexist.
Restoring the top continuation changes the page from a partial domestic fragment into a fuller movement from self-regard to household voices. The rooms, old songs, mother-and-wife figure, meal, and pills all surround the man with care and decline, but the final lines still insist that mischief remains tied to the hilt of life.
Continuing the mirror scene, the man's reflection sits 'in A gold oval' and he sees that 'after so / many travels he remains just A boy on these moments.' The household opens out into kitchen, dining room, and a glassed-in 'card room once A porch', where a seventy-year-old 'long man' wants 'to remember / old songs.' The 'mother and wife' whispers 'oh yes' or 'I can't remember' while serving a husband who 'groanes over A well / made meal' and asks for pills; he is 'afflicted with P.D.', yet 'his mischief has never / strayed from the hilt of life.' The 'mixed'-band spellings 'particulary' and 'groanes' are preserved; care and decline coexist without canceling the man's charm.