Assemble all the implements.
Then lock the door and set to work
when night falls.
It takes the darkness
for the thing inside to stir, and hours
of tender teasing out before it shows its shape.
Then deftly, cautiously, you set it in a vice:
compress, condense, and purify;
decide what must be smooth and what left rough.
At last you chase its silver surface; polish round
and round until it gleams with hope
and sparkles with despair.
Now get up from the table
with its paperful of fragile words.
Unlock the door. Admit the day.
whypoetry 