JUST NIGHT Poem by Kees Ouwens

Breathless, I left the flat. Darkness seemed to fall upon me.
Madding clouds swept by in haste. With
tatters of moon. I sped away, following finite pavements,
pale lips taut - a stripe. Alternating here were
crops and trees, stubbornly holding their ground
the while, with me flitting past like a shade. So
driven now was I, ever swifter I sped
hither, the last pavement and road long gone,
just paths beneath my fleeting foot, just
night like endless steppe. Oh, how I loved myself,
and hence I wept, as if I would be lost.