By the Clear Green River
Clark Ashton SmithBy the clear green river, One afternoon in early autumn, A dragon-fly with crimson wings alit On the white thigh of my belovèd; And, ever since it flew, More fully have I known the loveliness And the transiency of days; And love and beauty burn within me Like the piled leaves of blood and amber That burn at autumn’s ending.
The scale has collapsed completely from Smith’s cosmic poems — just one afternoon, one river, one dragonfly. The dragonfly lands and then leaves. The poem says: ever since it flew. Not since it landed. Since it left. The revelation comes from the departure, not the arrival. Loveliness and transiency aren’t two separate things here — they’re one thing. The beauty of that afternoon is inseparable from the fact that it ended.