Page 403

By Jack Joseph Smith

Ask The way to God They say it over again Nothing else The way through God God is here God must be clean God must be as in the beginning Everything from the start is not neccessarily acceptable But if change isn't to much Then we will keep to ourselves Except for the Jews From the beginnings Jews are intolerable Therefore Jews are not permitted They at the least must be dispot And let to wander as a sure scurage Everyone must understand this Or God will keep on killing

Original Scan

Page 403

AI Interpretation

GPT

This 'Ask' page records a staged logic of religious purity turning into exclusion, racialized hatred, exile, and divine threat.

The cleaned transcript makes the page's progression clearer: purity language hardens into permission, dispossession, and killing. It is important to read this as the poem staging a dangerous voice rather than endorsing it.


Claude

Titled 'Ask', this page stages a chilling catechism in which purity-talk slides step by step into atrocity. It begins reasonably enough - 'The way to God', 'God must be clean', 'God must be as in the beginning' - then hardens through 'change isn't to much' and 'we will keep to ourselves' into the exclusion 'Except for the Jews', and finally into expulsion: Jews are 'intolerable', must be 'dispot' and 'let to wander as a sure scurage', closing on the threat 'Or God will keep on killing'. The poem is best read as ventriloquizing a monstrous logic - the gentle liturgical opening makes the descent into eliminationist 'reasoning' the horror it exposes rather than endorses.