The Atheist

A church is like a pit
for catching elephants, he said.
One is built, the other dug,
and there the difference ends.
If anything, the elephant,
nature's bulldozer supreme,
is cannier and harder to ensnare.

And Christ was no more God
than Darwin was a scientist, he said.
He fitted these together somehow,
like they were made for one another.
He had an inexhaustible supply.
Many a resulting image looked
remarkably surreal.

One day I found him in the church,
kneeling, sheepish when he saw me.
Don't saddle me with faith, he said.
I can't believe a thing
for which there is no evidence,
and what there is of that is just provisional -
and I am dying, man!