Page 79

By Jack Joseph Smith

Dominus fobuscum, oramus. You you could almost see his words being written in the falling and rising flow of air, that was like a thick black parchment being folded to ashes. His throat sent long and painful sounds through the thick wooden doors, so that a person standing in the street might hear them and for a moment catch their mind wondering into the dark past of a bleeding time. Sound of the deep down within the delicate lungs of a capsuled voice box containing the stammering of humanity. No one knew where these sounds came from, and none excepted it as pain. You could sense an invisible wall closing in front of their faces like a sliding door. They didn't want to see any sharp stones, that led to nowhere. Let alone be drawn away so far, that they could feel themselves being led over them. Only the children were not afraid of the cry towering above the relived death of Christ. They could watch it cycle in a spasm and close its healing power around their preocupation with involvement. Certainly I was entranced, with wide eyes that belonged somewhere in the future on a high evil hill playing with a shimmering moon. It was like he was experiencing a climax with death on these moments, and the passions of the two in embrace could never be torn apart. This moment so finely cast a mold of neither life or death, that possibly he would never die. The moment truly was eternal and as seperate from him as the death he was reliving. All expectation of meaning had gone away and it was as if Christ had risen long before his crucification. What he had promised himself in the garden, Father Lawnigan had also promised himself before he walked on to the alter. That the deliverence of man was in his going beyond his own pain, so that when his soul was left to the wolves he would already be gone and be able to remind them of their foolish vengience. Look at me, he must have been saying, and you will see that my lonely white streaks running between

Original Scan

Page 79

AI Interpretation

GPT

His Mass voice rises like pain dragged through wood and air, frightening adults but entrancing children who feel him reliving Christ's passion as something beyond ordinary life and death.

The sermon is heard less as meaning than as force, a sound thick enough to bend imagination and bodily feeling. Children are singled out as the only ones unafraid, which makes their bond with him feel visionary rather than obedient.

Claude

The mangled Latin ('Dominus fobuscum, oramus') becomes visible sound, 'like a thick black parchment being folded to ashes', the priest's painful throat carrying through 'thick wooden doors' into the street and 'the dark past of a bleeding time'. Adults recoil behind 'an invisible wall closing in front of their faces like a sliding door', refusing the 'sharp stones, that led to nowhere', while 'Only the children were not afraid of the cry'. The narrator reads the Mass as Lawnegan 'experiencing a climax with death', a moment 'finely cast a mold of neither life or death' so 'possibly he would never die'. The vision links the priest to the speaker's own future self 'on a high evil hill playing with a shimmering moon' and to a Christ who 'had risen long before his crucification', the deliverance lying in 'going beyond his own pain'. Scan-backed spellings ('fobuscum', 'crucification', 'vengience') are preserved.