The Fly Who Dreamed He Was an Eagle

Once upon a time there was a Fly who nightly dreamed that he was an Eagle and that he found himself flying over the Alps and the Andes. The first moments of the experience always made him deliriously happy; but after a time he would begin to feel uneasy, as he found the wings too long, the body too heavy, the beak too hard, and the claws too strong. Indeed, all this great apparatus made it difficult to settle comfortably on rich cakes or people’s turds, or to do a conscientious job of bumping against the windows of his room. The fact was he really didn’t like great heights or open spaces at all.

But whenever he awoke he would deeply regret that he wasn’t an Eagle who could soar over mountains, and was enormously sad about being a Fly—and this accounted for all the nervous flitting about and spinning and buzzing, before he could slowly settle his head onto his pillow.

Augusto Monterroso 1969

La oveja negra y demás fábulas/The Black Sheep and Other Fables, translated by Walter Bradbury