'Time learns its impotence'

You got lucky as well: where else, save perhaps in a snapshot perhaps,

will you forever remain free of wrinkles, lithe, caustic, vivid?

Having bumped into memory, time learns its impotence.

Ebb tide; l smoke in the darkness and inhale rank seaweed.’’

From “Brise Marine,’’ by Joseph Brodsky (1940-96), Russian-American poet