Untitled ("It is with and without music")

By Jack Joseph Smith

It is with and without music The dog has not left the front porch Worried, not set inside the front door There is not a stoop here Just wooden lifts And lonelyness Our dog knows as well as I YA' can not hunt When there is something wrong with the way the bells ring Hey, I search for a voice And I am the saint in the revirbation

Original Scan

Page 5

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker watches a dog on the porch, shares its loneliness, and says hunting is impossible when something is wrong with the bells. The closing speaker searches for a voice and calls themself the saint in the revirbation.

The dog knows something the speaker also knows, but neither leaves the house's threshold. The speaker listens for a wrongness in the bells and for a voice, joining domestic unease with religious language.


Claude

The poem opens 'It is with and without music' and describes a dog that 'has not left / the front porch', a porch with 'Just wooden lifts / And lonelyness', the warning 'YA' can not hunt / When there is / something wrong / with the way / the bells ring', and the close 'And I am the saint / in the revirbation'.

Waiting and wrong-sounding bells create unease that the poem never explains. The speaker ends by placing themself inside the echo rather than outside it.