The Blackness In Argument

By Jack Joseph Smith

The long drawn out death of truth Doesn't sing the chant of evil or as -a child doesn't inmediately go to take And it doesn't steal like a swift: thief It rather grows:backvards down to Your last littleness- Until it ferments disease against life like the shadow of death the fish feel. from a polluted friend in a pond

Original Scan

Page 92

AI Interpretation

GPT

A compact poem likening the slow death of truth in argument to a disease that grows backward and ferments like the shadow of death felt by fish in a polluted pond.

Claude

Truth does not die by violence here but by reversal — it 'grows backwards down to your last littleness' until it ferments disease against life. The final image — the shadow of death that fish feel from a polluted friend in a pond — is devastatingly precise: the blackness in argument is not the argument itself but what seeps into the water around it, poisoning by proximity rather than by force.