My cherished demon -
Before whom I would sooner snip my plastic than curse,
Though the grey-suits should frown,
And economies creak in overbearing displeasure -
Did Donne or Byron ever purchase your holy repentance
From which I - most recent in sequence - have corrupted you Back to Milton's inferno:
like an eternal yo-yo the Muses use?

Could I, like they (if indeed they did),
Dissuade you from pagan pleasures
With some Damascus-road-like vision,
Or will your Artemis demands persist
In Chemo-therapeutic repetition?

I am haunted by faces framed in the gallery of my mind Of those I loved,
mounted on caskets Pandora and Plato would know.