Gloss on a poem by Paul Celan

Whether time walks or flows or oozes
or even exists is difficult to say -
maybe it stumbles, strikes as we do
through our perception of it...

Time is much slower for flies
who will go on almost forever.
Maybe we surge from the womb
cracking its shells open like nuts
and then lose the kernels -
so there are seven billion different times,
different mandalas, mandorlas which never
return to the shattered shells
that are culture and consciousness.
Yet - in a nutshell - I can miraculously live
with my dying: along with the billions,
I never existed. It is long past the time
for me to sink into timelessless
gorged by and governed by flies.