Ancient Greek and Indian Lyrical Poetry is absolutely filthy. While we typically think of ancient poetry as dignified or epic in nature, a quick reading of Hipponax (6th Centure BCE?) would quickly dispel this notion.

αμαὶ ‘πιφ[/ ἐκδύντες α[/ ἐδάκνομέν τε κἀφ[ιλ<έο>μεν/ διὲκ θυρ<έω>ν βλέ[ποντες/ μ<ὴ ἥ>μ<εα>ς λάβ[/ γυμνοὺς ἐρυ[/ ἔσπευδε δ’ ἡ μ[ὲν/ ἐγὼ δ’ ἐβίν<ε[ο>ν ]τε κα[ὶ/ ἐπ’ ἄκρον ἕλκων ὥσπερ ἀλλᾶντα ψήχων,/ ] κλαίειν κελεύ[ων Βού]παλο[ν/ ]κ[αί] μ’ αὐτίκ’ ἐξ[ ]σεν ἐκ δεπ[/ ]καὶ δὴ ‘πὶ τοῖς ἔργοισιν εἴχομ[εν/ ]ἐγὼ μὲν ὥσπ[ερ ῥ]υσὸν ἱστι..[/

On the ground…/ undressing…/ we bit and kissed…/ keeping watch through the doors…/ in case … should catch us/ naked…/ and she eagerly…/ while I was fucking … and…/ pulling free the tip, like skinning a sausage…/ saying ‘to Hell with Boupalos!’…/ and straightaway she … me out of…/ and we rested from our labours…/ I, like a wrinkled sail…/^1

Here Hipponax may also have invented the Dis Track. His feud with Bupalus/Boupalos was well known and has even been the subject of several academic papers.

Here's another;

...Deceiving the sons of Eythreaens by these means/Boupalos, the-one-sleeping-with-his-mother, with Arete about to pull back the ill-omened foreskin^2

Of course, there were certainly less vulgar but no less erotic poetry. Sappho gives us this lovely, but erotically charges Sapphic, one of my favorite poems ever written, and while I can only understand the English, it is even lovelier in the original Greek.

He’s equal with the Gods, that man/ Who sits across from you,/ Face to face, close enough, to sip

Your voice’s sweetness, /And what excites my mind, /Your laughter, glittering. So, /When I see you, for a moment,/My voice goes,

My tongue freezes. Fire, /Delicate fire, in the flesh. /Blind, stunned, the sound /Of thunder, in my ears.

Shivering with sweat, cold /Tremors over the skin, /I turn the colour of dead grass, /And I’m an inch from dying.^3

Of course, one might be tempted to think this was simply a Greek thing, it wasn't. Ancient Indian poetry was similarly erotic, though was typically subtler about it. Here's an example from Sangam Poetry of the ancient Dravidian Chola Empire;

Akanānūru 206, Mathurai Maruthan Ilanākanār, Marutham Thinai – the heroine refuses entry to the messenger virali

How will it be talked about, my friend?

The man from the town,/ ……….where men who are happily drunk/ ……….dance like women, raising and twisting/ ……….their hands resembling thick, twisted horns of/ ……….buffaloes, and young men who do small chores/ ……….climbing on a large drum with a buffalo hide/ ……….with hair, appear from a distance like monkeys/ ……….on a boulder,/ unites with women with chosen jewels, whose beautiful,/ dark bodies look like rainy season’s dark eengai sprouts,/ and with endless love crushes the garlands on their chests/ with big breasts in their large houses with festivities,/ where the eyes of the drums do not dry.

Hating that, my perfect bangles slipped down my curved,/ delicate arms like the endless huge salt heaps that melted/ away in the heavy rains on the shores of Veerai town of the/ murderous Vēlir clan!^4

This trend of erotic lyric poetry continued well into the Gupta period and beyond:

She averts a well-bred face/ when her lord/ fingers her skirt./ He moves to enfold her/ she extracts/ her limbs mildly./ Caught wordless,/ eyeing the conspiratorial smiles/ of her bridesmaids/ at a first joke the girl/ nearly perishes./^5

It even appears in some unexpected places like the Buddhist enlightenment songs of the Charyapada;

Press the Three Circles and Oh Yogini! Embrace me/Mashing the Lotus, we will make love in the evening/Yogini, I cannot live a moment without you/I will kiss your mouth and drink the nectar of the lotus/Friction cannot besmear you Yogini/She enters orient by climbing Manikula/Put a Lock and Key on the mother-in-law's door/and cut the wings from the Sun and Moon/Gundaripa says: I am the Hero of Sensuality/Between man and Women I raise my linga^6,7

Sex is a pretty common part of daily life for most of all ages, perhaps even moreso in those days. Songs and poetry about sex have always been there and likely always will be. While we tend to have this view of ancient or medieval people as puritanical when it comes to sex, it is quite the opposite. In India, things couldn't be more different with the popular and upper class poetry being erotic or sensual at nearly all points of it's history. Tantrism influenced both religious thought and literature, eroticisizing the decidedly unerotic Jain and Buddhist literature bringing it more in line with Śavite literature.

Sources:

1. Paratacian, retrieved from his tumblr, a poor source but I've asked some people who speak Greek who informed me it was a colorful but not entirely inaccurate translation.

2. Rosen, Ralph M. Hipponax, Boupalos, and the Conventions of the Psogos. 1988, University of Pensylvania. Retireved from JSTOR. The Above Poem appears in this one as well but only in Greek then described in English, adding more credibility to the above translation.

3. Kline, A.S. The Poetry and Fragments of Sappho.

4. Vaidehi, The Sangam Poems Translated by Vaidehi

5. Schelling, Andrew. Erotic Love Poems of India, Wisdom Publications. 2004.

6. Kativagan, Mystic Poems of 8th Century India*

7. Ratul, Tanvir. The Charyapada. Antivirus Publications. 2016*

*I kind of mashed them together and retranslated bits myself in order to give a more accurate possible translation