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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 tunnel 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

Titled 'The Transcending Need', the typed poem opens 'I pray may a tree bring me liriodendron', moves through halls 'fired from war', 'pre-planned horrorable crusades' and 'the action named LUNGE', has the speaker 'watching my pieces / to be carried away / To the light', hears a sound 'tunnel the silent brain / For the forgiveness of sins', and ends with the plow and the angel, bones that 'sing for the soil', and 'the simple man's reliance toward burning stars'.

The poem is a long prayer that tries to pass through violence and fragmentation toward something like grace. Its images swing between war and liturgy, from crusades and a lunge to a requiem hymn and the holy ghost, so the need to transcend is felt as pressure rather than calm. The ending grounds that need in earth and dust while still pointing upward to the stars, joining burial and aspiration.