More of the wonderful morning-star vision from the socially philosophical mind of Christian Morgenstern who seems to have anticipated and exposed a century earlier the mindset of modern planning departments with nanny-State concerns for "Occupational Health and Safety' & other shadows of the cult of the command-bureaucracy. And, a pretty impressive understanding of our fossil-fuel fired traffic catastrophes in one who died in 1914
THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT
- Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914)
Palmstroem, old, an aimless rover,
walking in the wrong direction
at a busy intersection
is run over.
"How," he says, his life restoring
and with pluck his death ignoring,
"can an accident like this
ever happen? What's amiss?
"Did the state administration
fail in motor transportation?
Did police ignore the need
for reducing driving speed?
"Isn't there a prohibition,
barring motorized transmission
of the living to the dead?
Was the driver right who sped . . . ?"
Tightly swathed in dampened tissues
he explores the legal issues,
and it soon is clear as air:
Cars were not permitted there!
And he comes to the conclusion:
His mishap was an illusion,
for, he reasons pointedly,
that which must not, can not be.
* * *
translated from the German to English by Max Knight
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