Geometries

Here's another poem from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) that was unpublished in his lifetime, and since it's not available on The Eldritch Dark, here's the complete text:

Your body and mine, upon the bed opposed,
presented changing forms and lines Euclidean.

Our heads' irregular and hairy spheres

pillowed in close conjunction, or describing

tangents, diagonals, parabolas

in the unresting play of love.

Your tongue's obtuse triangle

parting and rounded curves of our four lips,

advancing vibrantly, and vibrantly retracting.

The spiral of my kisses 

climbing from base to nipple gradually

about your full maternal breasts unspoiled,

whose hemispheres were flattened later 

beneath the planes of low male breasts.

Caresses of our straight-drawn fingers

in tender parallels,

caresses

of fingers bent, half-angled and half-arced,

of concave palms enfolding knee or buttock

or breast or shoulder;

and intersections multi-angular

of arms and legs embracing.

And lastly

the lingham's rigid rectilinear line

bisecting the yoni's cloven, soft triangle.

All these were figures formed in time,

figures that changed and vanished,

and passed, perhaps, into eternity,

rejoining their Platonic absolutes.

And afterward

you went away, and I was left to ponder

on love's geometries of straight and curved.

This poem is more explicitly erotic than most of what flowed from CAS' pen, and yet despite the references to the lingham (usually spelled "lingam") and the yoni, it's little more than a technical exercise in describing a carnal encounter in geometrical terms.  I doubt CAS intended for this particular piece to be read by others, but nonetheless it's an interesting example of The Bard of Auburn experimenting with a new mode of poetic expression.