Portrait of an Artist

The mirror mirrored
Time’s imprisonment
Pale green walls
One-bulb light

The sound of the decades
Counted tick bloody tock
Days already fading

Pencil and pen
Dragged out strokes
Flyblown words
Marks on a page
In an old room
Past and future
The intangible present

I wore my hair long
As was the fashion then
Bearded like a poet
Or artist whose pride
Drew itself passively
Let itself be described
By my automatic hands

From spindle-shanked boy
Through youth to age
These same features
Stretched over my bones
Seniority like a veneer
Like some superimposition
Varnished my face
Time’s reckless revisions

I have it still
On a wall
In memory
My self-portrait
Stolen from
A cascade
Of moments

A theft
Unconsidered

A trifling sketch

© BH, 2017

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I have a self portrait. It's at the top of the page here. I drew it a long time ago (about 1974). 

It suggested a starting point for some writing. So it evolved, a sort of attenuated self portrait, a musing on the nature of time between. 

Then I mutated it into this poem. Even more attenuated. Today's image of me is on the left - go to the story -  Self Portrait…

I still hardly recognise myself, by the way.