The Impossible Fact:

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.

_

[Poem "Die unmögliche Tatsache" (1909) by Christian Morgenstern, English translation by Max Knight]