The poem is about the power of words, though in this case a destructive power.
To me this is a very direct poem. Words are like axes, powerful and sharp, loud, emitting echoes, everyone can hear them, everyone can see their effect.
Words can be like axes, if they are used cruelly. They hurt. They drag her and wound her, bringing her to the surface sap, like tears, or like the blood-jet of poetry, trying to re-establish her own image, the mirror, her own sense of self. They cut into the tree which may symbolize a person, the sap which wells being tears. The tears are heavy like a rock and d…
