HERZ AUS GLAS

“I look into the distance,

to the end of the world.

First time will tumble,

and then the earth.

The clouds will begin to race,

the earth boils over,

this is the sign.

This is the beginning of the end.

The world’s edges begins to crumble,

everything starts to collapse,

tumbles, falls, crumbles and collapses.

I look into the cataract.

I feel an undertow it draws me, it sucks me down.

I begin to fall,

a vertigo seizes upon me.

Now I look at one spot in the tumbling waters.

I seek one spot on which my eyes can rest.

I become light, lighter, lighter.

Everything becomes light,

I fly upwards.

Out of the falling and the flying,

a new land arises.

Like the submerged Atlantis,

the earth rises out of the waters.

I see a new earth.

Now I see the rocky islands again.

I see them quite clearly.

They lie on the far edge of the inhabited world.

Word has not reached the men there,

that the earth is round.

They have retained that the earth is flat,

and that the ocean far beyond,

ends in a yawning abyss.

For many years they gaze,

across the sea from the rock.

Then one day, they decide the ultimate.

They want to reach the edge of the world,

to see if there really is an abyss.

It may have seemed like a sign of hope,

that the birds followed them out

into the vastness of the sea.”

(After the film Herz aus glas from Werner Herzog)