Looping over a table variable

I'd like to declare a cursor to loop over a table variable, something like this:

1.  DECLARE temp = SELECT a, b,c  from atable;

2.  DECLARE CURSOR cur FOR SELECT * FROM :temp;

This code, however, results in the error message on line 1:

     Syntax error. "=" is incorrect or misplaced.

Changing the code to this:

1.  temp = SELECT a, b,c  from atable;

2.  DECLARE CURSOR cur FOR SELECT * FROM :temp;

gives a different error message on line 2:

     Syntax error. "DECLARE" is incorrect or misplaced.

Is this possible? I was already thinking of moving the DECLARE cursor into a second procedure that is called from this one. But there must be a better way..