By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page opposes civic order to the twisting, earthly life it tries to banish, then turns toward a private plea for spiritual or artistic rescue.
The imagery is compressed but pointed. Cities reject snakes and lizards, then remake leaves into symbols of their own rightness, so the poem treats culture as a system that edits the natural world into acceptable forms. The closing appeal for an 'improvisation of theopathy' feels like a way out of that godless correction.
A late-book epigram — cities banish what twists toward the surface (snakes, lizards) and then create 'theaves' in that image to legitimate the banishment. Jack's 'improvasation of theopathy' is the page's quiet counter-move: improvise a god-feeling against the cleaned city.