Been working on this, a poem from a year ago, with help from Eratosphere:
Sleepless After Ovid
The moon, days past the full, slips off the sky
The waxing gibbous moon slips off the sky
Behind me while the sun's still at my feet,
And for a time that famous crowd swings high,
AndSo clear and bright — no sight so darkly sweet,
Or strangely dark. There reels Callisto, raped
And spurned and murdered, never let to rest;
And there Andromeda still chained, who only escaped
Because aWhen Perseus, child of rape, swerved from his quest.
It's colder when the heavens clear at night,
But not so cruel as it clearly seemed
In verses made In the grip of gods two thousand years ago —
To chafe the gods by one who couldn't know
For blessedly, they're gone, and now we know
TheThat stars are suns far older than he dreamed,
ButThough still too young to flood the sky with light.
That's hard to read, so here it is plain:
Sleepless After Ovid
The waxing gibbous moon slips off the sky
Behind me while the sun's still at my feet,
And for a time that famous crowd swings high,
So clear and bright — no sight so darkly sweet,
Or strangely dark. There reels Callisto, raped
And spurned and murdered, never let to rest;
Andromeda still chained, who only escaped
When Perseus, child of rape, swerved from his quest.
It's colder when the heavens clear at night,
But not so cruel as it clearly seemed
In the grip of gods two thousand years ago —
For blessedly, they're gone, and now we know
That stars are suns far older than he dreamed,
Though still too young to flood the sky with light.
Updated 2005 02 05: The essay's put off until tomorrow because Greg Perry made me work on this poem — see the first comment below. And I realized that there's no way the moon, days past the full, could set any significant length of time before the sun rose except perhaps in the dead of winter at very high latitudes. Not a likely time and place for stargazing.
My original post is at the top, with strikethroughs indicating today's revisions.
9:09:22 PM 
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