I Saw Your Portrait In the Face of a Stranger

It was in smudged oil pastel; Soft to the glare and rough to the delicate brush of flesh. In your eyes were the starry night skies that Van Gogh never let go. But above all: your gait, your stride, your purposeful amble held the life I used to know. His face moulded like clay; And how I remember the faces he pulled, That could even make Mona Lisa give us a smile. Now that I see his profile set in stone I realise da Vinci can't ever resurrect a faint hint of the face I used to know. It's just like he said - the melting clocks. Dripping, gathering, forming into black pyramids of every thought he ever had. I wonder whether a face saves the user of its past life; Or is it like Picasso always said? The portrait split into a million faces of every person who wore it. One in chalk, one in charcoal and a luminous one blotted by a felt tip pen. In every one of these is the face of you that passes in the streets and carves a river through my cheek. I know only one of you exists in the portrait but I have to say, from far away, in a world that I cannot view, I spied on you and swear I glimpsed the face of the man I used to know.