Chance

Read "Chance" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/82/chance

This sonnet from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) was described as "a trifle awkward" by his mentor George Sterling*, but I think it has a raw power that is invigorating:


This monstrous god, half-idiot and half-ape,
With fumbling hands omnipotent to shape
A harlot's breast or build great altars.


The notion of an all-powerful deity capriciously manipulating the universe he has created is certainly not original to CAS, and neither is this the only poem in which CAS addressed that idea.  But I think his cosmic vision and the dark incidents presented in this brief poem partially mirror The Hashish-Eater, and do so in a compact form which impacts me more than the somewhat rambling narrative of that much longer and more famous work.



*See letter #254 in The Shadow of the Unattained: The Letters of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith published by Hippocampus Press.