Fin de siècle

The march of time demands its due,

Ruins crumble beneath its view.

Baalbek, it deems, is not enough —

Nor man, who’s made of mortal stuff.

It craves our thoughts, emotions, fears,

Our memories, forged through the years.

Such is the taste of time’s decree,

And I comply, though cautiously.

I am no coward, I won’t recoil —

I’ll be a relic beneath the soil,

If time should will, with lofty gaze,

To sweep me off in fleeting haze.

Or glance behind its shoulder’s span

At prey still warm, a breathing man.

I’m ready to lie beneath the sand,

Ignored by a lens in a traveler’s hand,

No feelings stirred, no passions raised —

For outward time is not to be praised.

To me, the forward flow of time

Holds little worth, no sense, no rhyme.

Backward time, though, deserves our gaze,

Or it stands as a façade in its own ways,

Resembling a garden, or chess in play,

Where moments linger, but don’t decay

Brodsky, 1996