NIGHT GAME

That morning it was as if I woke up in the middle of the night.

Everything was dark and silent: the room, the house, the garden, the street.

No light from lanterns of heavenly bodies shone in.

The curtains hung motionless in front of the window, as never before.

The alarm clock didn’t tick, the wardrobe didn’t creak, the bed didn’t squeak.

I lay completely motionless on my back, my arms at my side.

Then slowly the old face of a man appeared, leant over my face

and merged with it. It stammered: I’m tired of this deathlike face.

I suddenly freed myself from my body, got up and walked

into another room to look at the clock. I turned on the light

at the switch. The clock wasn’t going. I found myself in another room

in another house with another garden in another street. When

I woke up that morning, this life had been a dream.

Joris Iven