The Words of the Poem

So narrow the crack whence came the voice,
so forbidding the edifice glimpsed,
such flaming monsters, such terrible harmony,
so long the path, so keen the wound
and the night so protected.

They need to be just and ambiguous,
never seen before, evident, recognized,
spewed out, held back, spewed out,
packed tight as the seeds in the rat’s mouth,
tight and trim as the seeds on an ear of corn,
secret as the order
that makes the trees of paradise gleam together,
the words of the poem.