On Gerhard Richter's "Selbstportrait"

Going, going.

I nearly remembered.
(Perhaps that is how it began,
with the ordinariness of memory.)

Time is a celtic knot, debauching itself.
To believe in it is to cower in the company of shadows,
to crumble, mumble and stumble
through the unwilling curiosity of wakefulness,
to tremble beyond the tongue-tied outskirts of reason,
to gamble with absurdity and outscream silence
as it gnaws bare-knuckled at the whiteness of distance,
chipping away at the pearly expanse
until it grows weary,
dawns, secrets and passions falling away
through the years like sawdust off a chainsaw,
to reveal, one cold rainy evening,
the faint glimmer of a face that whispers wordlessly,
"I was a blue tomorrow once."