Page 112
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem argues that harming creators, believers, workers, or time itself is a form of self-destruction, then grounds that warning in a vision of shared terror.
Each command works like a blunt moral law: creation means change, prayer means loss, man is time, and the worker acts without full understanding. The language is rough and imperfect, but the logic is consistent in treating violence as something that rebounds on the one who commits it. The final image of thousands of terrified trees widens the argument beyond human conflict, making fear feel ecological and universal rather than merely personal.
'Being Angry is Believing the Anger / You are Angry With' delivers a chain of commandments -- 'Touch not the man who creates,' 'Kill not the worker' -- that treats violence as self-harm, then closes on a vision of 'thousands of trees in terror'.
Each precept is argued, not merely asserted, by a paired 'for' clause: creation is 'the symbol of change' and 'change is Gods law'; prayer is 'the symbol of loss' and 'loss is your friend'; 'To kill time is to kill thee / for man is time.' The Gospel echo 'he knows not what he do' and 'the meek shall inherit the earth' set the poem in a scriptural register the title's paradox undercuts. The final couplet pulls the abstraction down to dread -- 'self defense is a very serious fear, / For once I saw thousands of trees in terror' -- an ecological image that saves the page from pure preaching. Source spelling 'Gods' is kept verbatim.