Page 29

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Transcending Need I pray may a tree bring me liriodendron With the silence of why on the limbs of our time Immortality knows the axe and mass lied sigh Though, so as night leaves cries the wolf Halls have been fired from war While other-power textured rooms flickered from gentle flame And the same appearance of the unexplained Comes modern in pre-planned horrorable crusades As, within times of self vision. Lurks the action named LUNGE Yet with what is felt through the arch-myth of assurance: From nostalgic old eyes that see I will stay watching my pieces. to be carried away- To the light - though black at the beginning of its glow - a giving And with transference The truth in extention Will clear temptation not of the solid heart To listen through the ear of the real world all Until this sound does turnel the silent brain For the forgiveness of sins From the silver in insanities bell SEEN TO RING And as the Requiem Hymn is forbearance of the cliff Straining above that valley- deeper than the absolute below The highness that has bended the soul will place the I out of time on the holy ghost that spaces wind Now, the plow and the angel Lean on the naked inbetween of loss and gain And my bones sing for the soil Into it sensing dust to dust While the particles of what has risen becomes; the simple man's reliance toward burning stars

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A prayer-like meditation moves from war, rupture, and inner assault toward burial, forgiveness, and a stubborn faith in renewal.

The language keeps lifting ordinary materials into visionary symbols: tree, axe, wolf, bell, plow, angel, bones, and soil all share the same spiritual pressure. Violence and modern crusades appear beside the speaker's resolve to keep watching the self break apart and be carried toward light that begins in blackness. By the end, dust, wind, and burning stars turn death into a severe kind of reliance rather than simple defeat.

Claude

'The Transcending Need': a long, densely visionary prayer that opens 'I pray may a tree bring me liriodendron', runs through 'pre-planned horrorable crusades' and 'the silver in insanities bell', and resolves toward burial where 'my bones sing for the soil... sensing dust to dust' and 'the simple man's reliance toward burning stars'.

The poem holds the prayer form while filling it with a crowded, cross-register cosmology - botanical ('liriodendron'), military ('Halls have been fired from war'), liturgical ('Requiem Hymn', 'forgiveness of sins') - so transcendence is assembled from collision rather than calm. The structural sentence is 'Now, the plow and the angel / Lean on the naked inbetween of loss and gain': loss and gain are not options but the shared ground both labor and grace work, the 'naked inbetween' where the poem lives. Light here begins compromised - carried 'To the light / - though black at the beginning of its glow -' - so renewal is never clean, and the descent into 'dust to dust' becomes a 'reliance' rather than defeat, 'the particles of what has risen' turning back toward 'burning stars'. The retained spellings 'horrorable', 'extention', 'inbetween', and 'mass lied sigh' are kept as the scan shows them, part of the page's strained homemade liturgy.