By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Catholic and Zen practice are contrasted through kneeling, rising, slant, insect prayer, bird, and worm, turning bodily posture into a compact religious philosophy.
The humor helps here. The poem is odd and playful, but the comparison is still attentive to how bodies enact belief.
'The Bird And The Worm' builds a small comic theology out of how bodies kneel. The contrast is precise: 'the catholic: falls seperate / One knee at a time', 'While the zem goes dowm / Two at the same time'. Rising marks the divide too - 'The catholic may brace / Making a slant is alright / While the zen must rise alone' - which the poem distills into emblems: 'Thus the cross and the praying Mantis'. The closing couplet, 'There the bird / Here the worm', sets distant transcendence against the near, low, earthbound self. Source spellings ('Betweem', 'Zem', 'seperate', 'dowm') are preserved.