The Lunar Exemplar: to Donald Davie

From evening to evening, the pale
Model performs her gradual transformation:
Gold eye to lemon to sliver of fingernail,

She wanes, and back she waxes. What consolation
Have poets found in that austere routine
To draw their gazes toward her "fleecy mansion"

With warm attention, "even through blackest rain,"
For generations? "Whatever emerges, of good
Or satisfaction, is for other men,"

One poet wrote, "For me, my life is bad."
Two others saw a Centaur. As they came close,
He drew an arrow, and used its notch to spread

The beard along his jaws, and clearing a space
For his large mouth, to his followers he said:
"Have you observed how that one's steps displace

Objects his body touches? Feet of the dead
...