Page 415

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Temptist In the course we know no form The belly and the heart sink We are a stone and no one thinks Tell desperate vile the other way turns ash back into life She hished up the branches The sticks under the trees The twigs that spread what your looking for It was not a search or a hunt along the bank And it was not going away And it was not going to It was something wider than that Though, Now, we know we know

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This 'The Temptist' page presents temptation as something larger than hunt or search, a force that widens beyond intention while the heart and belly sink into it.

The handwritten Now at the end makes the closing turn more immediate. Temptation here is not a single event but a pattern the page keeps reliving.

Claude

'The Temptist' (the title's misspelling fusing tempest and tempter) opens in formlessness - 'In the course we know no form / The belly and the heart sink / We are a stone and no one thinks' - and a strange alchemy 'turns ash back into life'. A woman moves through the underbrush, 'She hished up the branches / The sticks under the trees / The twigs that spread what / your looking for', yet the poem keeps insisting on what the act was not: 'It was not a search / or a hunt / along the bank', not arriving and not leaving but 'something wider than that'. The handwritten 'Now' inserted into the closing 'Though, Now, / we know we know' pulls the diffuse temptation into the present tense - a force recognized rather than pursued.