Page 13

By Jack Joseph Smith

Trumpet of the Mule Part I: Animal "Whole frame the sun stood still on him. Whispering, summer wind touched slightly on the brink listening to the sea a murmur grabbing his body and he rose, Into the dew swam the rayed light, Though there was direct heat removing water, when pecking beneath plants there was always a feeling of mist for him. This was not a feeling like the abandonment of life, or like being only words." "It takes me into the earth of things!" It is Animal, and now he is looking out to you. No need to get far fetched about Animal! Seen way out is the sun. It glimmers, fades, and then asks the muscles of the human race to push out and catch its lone power. Below there is sea rolling slight. For these are the places Animal inhabites: islands, dunes, and the ends of desert. Where there is sea in sooth; where the foam of salt and blazed cheek may settle on sand. The soft wind asked him to come, and he rose out of a money blanket on Madison Avenue and followed. There remained for a long time though a thing to fight, for the estate posted its sins in a check at his doorstep of the seven seas as he pushed on toward his time for decision. "When my mother wept it hurt my youth, because she was a getting older delicate toy my fathers flung from their minds as wasteful children do. I have had not a home to load, but my mother dreamed of falling in silk from the corner of the penthouse wall. The Animal how- ever, is not any poet's pit of stone. Problems may be the constant nag of wishful bliss, but I will garnish the longing pull of the beach bums possibility dreams with pitchers of rum and cokes." "It was on the Caribbean, where fined glass for noon ashore drinks seemingly cast out a crystal upon the native waiters hands. Within the ship the lower deck tucks tightly away its Merchant Englishmen. They looked up from their duties and slumming ladies. Round coined silver has turned out dipping in turn down as the breeze through the air. It was tossed from the ships balcony by the poor poor lady who has cancer obvious on her face, and her favorite brought it up from bottom to surface in his white teeth."

Original Scan

Page 13

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page builds Animal out of drift, inheritance, and spectacle, moving from beach and desert light into mother-memory, city ruin, and Caribbean fantasy.

The voice keeps remaking Animal by throwing him through different social and imaginative terrains. Madison Avenue, penthouse sorrow, merchant Englishmen, and tropical drink culture all become part of a restless myth of modern dislocation, under the handwritten title 'Trumpet of the Mule'.

Claude

Labeled 'Part I, Animal' — the same sun-standing-still opening as page 11, now expanded to include the mother weeping in silk from a penthouse corner and a Caribbean scene where a dying woman tosses rum-colored silver from her ship's balcony. The page shows Animal assembling his origin myth out of both desert light and inherited class imagery.