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Any text that survives to be

Scrutinized by humans will be

Scrutinized by moralities

That, in a few generations

At the most, are certain to be

Squinting through glass ground differently

Than the lenses known to the text’s

Peers and near contemporaries.

No poem can be made so holy

No devotion could abhor it.

Even decency slides sideways,

Like all other aspirations,

And the most pure outrageousness

Comes to seem mixed, mostly charming,

And then fondly embraced, no doubt

With the faint, pleased sense of being

A wise reader on the right side

Of a most righteous history.

So don’t try, little poem—you’ll be

Both good and evil, by and by,

But only by the absurd fluke

Of having actually survived.