Tribute to CAS
Posted by:
TomGoff (IP Logged)
Date: 1 October, 2019 09:10PM
Dazzling, Sinister Word-Worlds
Clark Ashton Smith! Your name strikes adamant.
Yours are the color wheel’s most tenebrous hues.
Your lexicon, though, helps lighten graver views
Via dazzling words…note cinnabar in slants
Of fulgor that replenish mystic heavens
With gleams that yield to amethystine glow,
Fading to verdant lights, azures uneven,
Combating more scarlet farewells which we know
For sundown…yet these are noons upon your worlds
Whose shadowed carmine undersides of leaf,
Whose branches, must pale near alabraundine stems
And trunks that mutter malice to the furled
Black roots ground into slime-fouled dregs of grief
In draughts distilled as from molten anadems.
Grief to explorers whose bright-colored schemes
Mislead them where leechlike, suctioning darkness teems…!