Thursday, July 2, 2020

Lichens

Read "Lichens" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/299/lichens

This poem from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) really plays to the author's strengths, combining a close observation of nature with invocations of the weird and the fantastic:


Old too they seem and with the stones coeval—
Fraught with the stillness and the mystery
Of time not known to man;
Like runes and pentacles of a primeval
Unhuman wizardry
That none may use nor scan.


CAS' ability to see the inherent magic in the lowly (and easily-ignored) lichens speaks to both his sensitivity to the natural world and his ability to express what is prompted by that sensitivity.  Great stuff all around!

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