The Fair One

Still I am haunted by the one who dwells in all my dreams:
The fair, the radiant woman I saw one morning at the streams,
Where I had gone to fetch the water,
A task more suited to a daughter,
But she was bound up that morning in a dress split at the seams.

Still I am haunted by the one I saw when I raised my head:
She who crouched there with her flowing hair of maple-red,
Unbound hair a tumbling glory,
Blue eyes out of a bard's story,
And voice sweet and silvery as a lament for the dead.

Still I am haunted by the one who spoke to me in words-
Words I could not understand, but fairer than the birds
Sing in the tallest trees-
Words as warm as summer breeze,
Words that flowed over me like milk and left me with curds.

Still I am haunted by the one who then shook out her hair:
And my heart made a little noise, for she was so fair
I knew I had lost my heart-
As one will by enchanter's art-
But it was no enchantment, only the lady who crouched there.

Still I am haunted by the one who plucked out a crimson lock:
Still I can feel the song like lightning from the shock
As her hands touched mine,
Soft as the hands of God divine
When he causes the cradle of the world to rock.

Still I am haunted by the aura from that one single tress:
It had something of the silkiness, I thought, of her dress,
Which was made of iridescent
Cloth so magnificent,
Simply gazing on it could all the gazer's sins redress.

Still I am haunted by the lady all those years ago:
Still I am haunted by the idea that no one else could know
What I knew then and there,
For a faerie lady, much less one so fair,
Has not been seen in more years than human thought can follow.

But I saw her, and I still am haunted by the very thought
That if on that morning, long ago, I had not walked the flower-wrought
Way to the silver waters,
That last of Faerie's daughters
Could have been seen by someone else, and perhaps another caught

In this web of enchantment and of hopeless magic love.
Not that I mind, for I treasure that one memory above
All my thoughts of other men.
I have the thought she might come back again,
Alighting on the bank of the flowing water like a dove,

And I could hold out my hand, the hair upon one finger,
And tell her that she must take it back, and not long linger.
She would smile, and then 
Take her hair back again,
And weave it into her hair, and then swiftly wing her

Way back over the stream, into the forest, towards the sea.
It is almost too much to hope that such a wonder could ever be.
But I think she will find some way:
If not to return one day,
Why in the name of all the gods did she leave her hair with me?