The speaker of "Pilgrim" seems to be someone stripped down to almost nothing, and strangely cheerful about it. The opening image is odd and intimate: words that suit the speaker's "madness" lick them in the ear, as if language itself were an animal or a lover whispering something half-wild. Then comes a blunt self-description. The speaker is "nothing but the truth / in plain binding," like a book with no decoration, just the text.
The last two lines carry the poem's mood. Lighting a single match "to be merry" is a small, almost childish act, and the place for it is "the temple of no way," a phrase that suggests a holy site with no path, no answer, no promise. The pilgrim arrives anyway and makes a tiny light. The feeling is a mix of bareness, defiance and wry joy. Nothing is certain, but the speaker doesn't seem to mourn that. The poem stays short, strange and playful, even while it faces emptiness.