Take the needles and the knives

Take the needles and the knives,
Put an iron at the eyes,
Let a maggot at the ear
Toil away till music dies.

Let me in the devil’s groves
Cut my fingers on a rose,
Let the maggot of despair
Drain the spring where promise goes.

Take the scissors and the pan,
Let the tiny armies lap,
And the heralds of decay,
At the labyrinthine pap.

Choke the bladder with a stone,
Fill the veins the fevers broke,
All the cabinned faiths deny
And the feeble house of hope.

And a child might be my slayer,
And a mother in her labour
Murder with a cry of pain ;
Half a smile might be her sabre.

Let it be a sword of fire,
Lightning or the darting viper,
Thunder’s rod or man’s machine;
God and I will pay the sniper.

Flesh is suffered, is laid low,
Mixes, ripens, in the loam;
Spirit suffers but is still
In its labyrinthine home.

In the wilderness they go,
Flesh and spirit, babe and dam,
Walking in the evening’s cool
With the leper and the lamb.

In the darkness dam and babe
Tremble at the starry stain,
And the ruin of the sky;
Darkness is the dam of pain.

Take the scissors to this globe,
Firmament of flesh and bone
Lawed and ordered from on high
By a godhead of my own.

Mother root that shot me forth,
Like a green tree through the sward,
Mothers me until I die,
And my father was the lord.

When I yield the tree to death,
In the country of the dead
Dam and sire, living, lo,
Will be breathing by my bed.

Take the needles to this tree
Bowing on its mossy knees,
Stitch the stem on to the leaf,
Let the sap leak in the breeze.

Thread and torture all the day;
You but wound the lord of days;
Slay me, slay the god of love ;
God is slain in many ways.

Question: Shall the root be true 
And the green tree trust the root?
Answer: Shall a mother lie
In the face of seed and fruit ?

Question: When shall root-dam die?
Answer: When her babe denies her.
Question: When shall root-dam grow?
Answer: When the green leaves prize her.