You have the power
to slow the beat of my heart. 

If I touched your needles
you might stop it.

That’s why they also call you 
Taxus baccata – toxic berry carrier.

Your taxines (taxine A and B, paclitaxel, 
isotaxine, taxicatine, taxols A and B)
jam channels of myocardial cells,
bring about cardiac arrest.

Cardiotoxic tree the Eburones drank your poison 
extracted ex arboribus taxeis – 
you stopped their hearts.

Beneath your boughts
I hear the echoes of their heartbeats
still beating slowly, so slowly like
the greater beat of the Heart of Annwn.

Like so many poisons
you are my cure.

*Ebura is the Proto-Celtic name for yew. The English ‘yew’ and Welsh ‘Ywen’ derive from the Proto-Germanic *iwo. The Eburones were a Gaulish-Germanic tribe in north-east Gaul.