Goe, and catche a falling starre,
     	Get with childe a mandrake roote,
	Tell me, where all past yeares are,
	Or who cleft the Divels foot...
    			And sweare
            	No where
	Lives a woman true, and faire.

				-John Donne, "Song"


I will go to the river tonight, and sing,
And if they permit, will see the constellations
      battling their mythologies in a blackened field-
And if December were its timely duty to uphold
      might catch a falling star of snow
      (alas, no hero or fallen goddess for these arms)-
And if mandrakes grew there I should graft
      one root to another, and call it new,
      conceiving children in the womb of night-
And there I would shout the place of all yesteryears.
      knowing they've traveled in light to Draco's jaw
      and chased the many centuries through galaxies-
And what of the Devil, the cloven goat:
Would he not wait there as well?
Hell's gates are in the folds of river paths
and clover patches pitch the charnel tent.
There Satan would lie, his hooves aloft,
God's jigsaw deep in his marrow.
And true women might beckon from the starry sky-
      but what need for them have I,
      beinq content with a boy and his piano?