By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Walking, kneeling, crying, and skipped stones lead to a jagged confession in which luck, faith, William Blake, and madness converge in the claim that Jesus was crazy.
The movement between standing, kneeling, and crying gives the poem a bodily rhythm of prayer and breakdown. Luck and faith arrive "as a fast fist," so blessing is inseparable from violence or shock. William Blake appears as the witness for instinct, allowing the closing judgment on Jesus to sound less dismissive than awed by a dangerous intensity.
Sometimes a walk, sometimes on his knees, crying with the brilliance that luck and faith bring 'as a fast fist.' Dark goes by; still the stone skipping, the jib on the sea. William Blake said he was instinct; 'I know Jesus was crazy.'