​Alfred Schaffer (The Netherlands) 

day(dream) # 3
 
The nights are the worst.
In the distance the last farms
but nothing strikes me as familiar, not even my own voice.
Nothing, nothing makes sense anymore –
all existing things suddenly seem dangerously close and recorded.
The water in the ditches, the wind through the knee-high grass
the porous earth and that horse over there
I think it’s a horse.
I do up my laces to buy time.
In my rucksack: water, food, dry clothes
a handful of bullets my mobile still has a signal.
I barely reflect, barely breathe.
As though I were dead but I’m bursting with life.
If I’m thirsty, I drink.
If I’m tired, I sing a song
my mother always used to sing to me.
From above this might look like running away
but everything looks dark from above.
A few kilometres at the most, I guess
then the sun will come up.
Gleaming, clear light all around.
 
Translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchinson