A Sunset

Read "A Sunset" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/557/a-sunset-%28as%29

This is one of two poems that Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) wrote with the same title. The present poem was included both in his first published collection The Star-Treader and Other Poems (1912) as well as his career-spanning Selected Poems (1971).

Although this poem is composed of only four lines, it presents a powerful image of a sunset colored as by blood from a wound.  The phrase "some enormous hurt" is arresting, and establishes a disturbing tone right from the start.  In the third line we get the image of "a dabbled skirt" which both completes the rhyme initiated with "hurt" and strengthens the suggestion of violence.