The first word is the hardest:

Letters combining and colliding
to emerge from the vast,
empty whiteness of the page,
a facsimile, an imitation
of matter taking form.

Some say
form is what really matters:
pre-existent, eternal,
the God-force of creation
dictating ex nihilo
the process of becoming.

And some say
matter is what really counts:
seductive and inert,
a slumbering potentiality
murmuring softly to be
molded and transformed
into an ever-eroding effigy
of the permanence of Being.

But I say
only the Logos calls and answers --
in dialogue and soliloquy --
deep sounding to deep:

A cry is formed in the dark heart of matter,
and a poet is born to utter it,
struggling -- his whole being burning --
to speak the last things of existence
before his voice gives way
and the gift betrays him.

Yes.
The first word is the hardest
because it is the last word,
it is the only word,
coming into the world as a whimper
and passing out of it as a groan.