“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”
―Christina Rossetti
Your words are not a warning I will heed
The lure of fairy fruit is far too strong,
So sweet, the taste of nectar on the tongue
It drowns your words before they reach my ears.
It drowns, it drowns me too. With spider
Silk around my wrists, as tangled ankles
Dance through fairy rings.
Strings jerk my puppet limbs and pull me on.
Through mushrooms, grown to capture and enslave.
Their sprongy heads poke up from rotten roots
Like maggots squirming deep through dying flesh.
I taste the gods, ambrosia, wine and feast
On fairy fruits.
Honey-thick juice seeps, tacky, on my teeth,
And bubbles from my lips to stain them red
The crimson liquid dribbles down my chin.
like some twisted iron hook has pierced
My lip, to tug, tug, tug me on
Through fairy fields.
Insp. Legends of humans lost in fairy rings and ensnared by fairy food, in particular the famous poem Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
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Sandy Denny, with Fairport Convention.