What drought and what rain?

What art and what pain? A
What brings the sculptor’s knife B
down against the stone’s grain? A
What internal strife B
Fuels the long-winded nights? C
What is the artist’s life B
Without its turgid fights? C
What drought and what rain A
Freshens the flower and fills the root
But leaves it wanting in its train
like perfume falling from a flute.

a melody bleeding from a flute

makes me love and kills the pain? A