In memoriam Joseph Brodsky
 

The wish to be right
has decamped in great numbers
but some come to God
in hopes of being wrong.

Goodbye to gentrifical force, 
to being on more than under that horse
as the poor climbed its every leg.
The building is an angular egg:

High on the end wall hangs
the Gospel, from before he was books.
All judging ends in his fix,
all, including his own.

Freedom still eats freedom,
justice eats justice, love – 
even love. But the retarded man says
church makes me want to be naughty.

In English evolution, we’re money,
genes to spend in the Darwin shops
on more genes, till personhood stops.
Church rose from the original, Jewish evolution.

Naked in a muddy trench
with many thousands, one is saying
the true god gives his flesh and blood.
Idols demand yours off you.
 

See also Les Murray's interview with Valentina Polukhina