—Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974), dir. Werner Herzog
An apple cannot be tired because
An apple has no life of its own.
If I ask the apple if it feels love, the apple cannot answer.
Does that mean the apple cannot feel love?
If I ask the apple how much it loves the taste of apple,
I am barbaric. I am a Man of Science.
If you roll the apple toward the onion patch, I will stop it
With my heel; if the apple bounces over my foot
The apple does not want to be stopped. Logic tells us
The apple prefers the onion patch.
*
I know a story about the desert but only the beginning.
It dreamed to me.
When my teacher corrects me—It came to me in
A dream or I dreamt it—I do not ask but wonder
Am I not the object of my dreams? The thing through which
Dreams happen? Otherwise
Wouldn’t I remember what happens after the beginning?
*
Like a routine test of reflex, my teacher after breakfast
Probes my sense of logic: occasioned
At home by two travelers, one from the village of liars
Another from the village of truth-tellers,
How might I differentiate the two? Before I can answer
My teacher maintains only one syntactical construction
Forces the liar to reveal himself through a double negative:
Do you visit my home from the village of liars?
I know this is not the only question I can ask the liar,
Who must answer in the affirmative when I ask
Are you a tree frog? The truth-teller will answer
I am not a tree frog. I am a tree frog.
*
I am a tree frog, and the long-necked water bird
Finds me hiding in the onion patch
Next to the apple before, of course, it eats me.
How else could this story end?
*
I dream of a procession climbing a mountain
Because at the summit the ocean feels near
In sight, and because at the top of the mountain awaits
Death. The dream ends at the summit.
I continue to sleep but a dream no longer happens to me.
I also remember a story about
The desert through which two travelers
Advance to finally find me in the village—
But the story begins there, when they arrive.
I do not remember what happens next.
*
Tell us the story, tree frog, even if it’s only the beginning.