as long as it is just a view and not data manipulation, what is wrong with that? You do not have to have template at all. What if your view is list generator with classes? Why having template at all?
Try https://github.com/mgutz/funcd. It's straight up CoffeeScript functions patterned after Markaby, Erector. Other CoffeeScript templates we tried did funky things with the context and closures didn't work as expected.
And when performance is a concern, you can't beat string interpolation within CoffeeScript heredoc strings.
Why can't people just use regular HTML for markup? Coffeescript is beautiful when you are composing short succinct functions but this just looks like more work for my brain.
I used coffeekup back in the day, but I just can't stand the jade-style declarative html. I also used eco for a while, but it got pretty messy too. I'm picky, I know :)