I could not, without instant death gaze...

I could not, without instant death

Gaze into a crate at a drained face

Of some person once familiar to me from the water's surface

Into which a man looked who, so I realise, died. 

Therefore I am unable to open this crate

Because this fear is in the both of me, for perhaps 

I am the Both which has just come about 

On our earth's transformable top surface:

A chopped-off batlike thing hanging

Betwixt rubber trees and hut, a night bird

A thing that would gladly be cheerful. 

One man equals no man. Some one has to call him. 

Therefore

I would gladly have looked into this chest

As the heart clings to its parents. 

Given a forest, which would still be there

If no one walked through it, and the very man

Who walked through where a forest once was:

How do they recognise each other?

When he sees his own footprints among the reeds

With water spurting into them, does that puddle mean anything to him? 

What is your opinion?

By what sign does Galy Gay know himself

To be Galy Gay? 

Suppose his arm was but off

And he found it in the chink of a wall

Would Gay Gay's foot cry out: this is the one!?

Therefore I am not looking into this chest. 

Moreover in my opinion the difference

Between yes and no is not all that great. 

And if Galy Gay were not Galy Gay

Then he would be the drinking son of some mother who

Would be some other man's mother if she 

Were not his, and thus would anyway drink. 

And would have been produced in March, not in September

Unless instead of March he had 

Been produced only in September of this year, or already

In September the year before

Which represents one small year's difference

That turns one man into another man. 

And I, the one I and the other I

Are used and accordingly usable. 

And since I never gazed at that elephant

I shall close an eye to what concerns myself

And shed what is not likable about me and thereby

Be pleasant.

Brecht, Bertolt. Man Equals Man, Sc. 9 pt. V, pp. 60-62.