WITH THE GIFT OF THIS BOOK

To hurt and fear, to every love,
Doors will shut or disappear:
I stand in patterns on the floor,
closed in the fuming light, and live
	to hurt and fear.

The poem kills its ancestor:
Whatever calls the hand, or fills
The mouth with suns and waterfalls,
Words are the closing of the door:
	The poem kills.

Lights will not burn in their own smoke:
I have seen the dead return;
And where those hollow fires have been,
where lips were motionless and spoke,
	lights will not burn.

Smoke will not lie upon its flame:
volcanic day, when earth and sky 
strode from each other, God lay
coiled in creation round his name,
	smoke will not lie.

But fire and death are in its tongue,
coiling in truth, shape without breath.
The latch is of a dragon's tooth:
we have seen little, being young,
	but fire and death.