Das Nasobēm, usually translated into English as The Nasobame, is a short nonsense

Nonsense

Nonsense is a communication, via speech, writing, or any other symbolic system, that lacks any coherent meaning. Sometimes in ordinary usage, nonsense is synonymous with absurdity or the ridiculous...

 poem by German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 writer Christian Morgenstern

Christian Morgenstern

Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on March 7, 1910...

 (1871–1914). It was written around 1895 and published in his book Galgenlieder (1905).

	Auf seinen Nasen schreitet		"Striding on its noses
	einher das Nasobēm,		there comes the Nasobame,
	von seinem Kind begleitet.		with its young in the tow.
	Es steht noch nicht im Brehm.		It isn't yet in Brehm's Brehms Tierleben Brehms Tierleben is a reference book, first published in the 1860s,which made its author, Alfred Edmund Brehm ,known around the world.- Publishing history :...
	Es steht noch nicht im Meyer.		It isn't yet in Meyer's Meyers Konversations-Lexikon Meyers Konversations-Lexikon or Meyers Lexikon was a major German encyclopedia that existed in various editions, and several titles, from 1839 until 1984, when it merged with the Brockhaus encyclopedia....
	Und auch im Brockhaus nicht.		And neither in Brockhaus' Brockhaus Enzyklopädie The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie is a German-language encyclopedia published by Brockhaus.The first edition originated in the Conversations-Lexikon mit vorzüglicher Rücksicht auf die gegenwärtigen Zeiten by Renatus Gotthelf Löbel and Christian Wilhelm Franke, published in Leipzig 1796-1808...
	Es trat aus meiner Leyer		It trotted out of my lyre Lyre The lyre is a stringed musical instrument known for its use in Greek classical antiquity and later. The word comes from the Greek "λύρα" and the earliest reference to the word is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists", written in Linear B syllabic script...
	zum ersten Mal ans Licht.		when it came first to light.
	Auf seinen Nasen schreitet		Striding on its noses
	(wie schon gesagt) seitdem,		thereon (as I've said above),
	von seinem Kind begleitet,		with its young in the tow,
	einher das Nasobēm.		there goes the nasobame."

This poem is notable for, among other things, having inspired zoologist Gerolf Steiner

Gerolf Steiner

Gerolf Steiner was a German zoologist.He was born on March 23, 1908 in Strasbourg, and occupied the chair of zoology at the University of Karlsruhe from 1962 to 1973. He is famous worldwide for a little book on the anatomy and habits of the Rhinogradentia, a fictitious order of mammals whose nose...

 to write in 1961 an extremely popular mock-scientific treatise on the fictitious animal order

Order (biology)

In scientific classification used in biology, the order is# a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family...

 of the Rhinogradentia

Rhinogradentia

The Rhinogradentia are a fictitious mammal order documented by the equally fictitious German naturalist Harald Stümpke...

, also called "nasobames" or "snouters", whose nasal

Nose

Anatomically, a nose is a protuberance in vertebrates that houses the nostrils, or nares, which admit and expel air for respiration in conjunction with the mouth. Behind the nose are the olfactory mucosa and the sinuses. Behind the nasal cavity, air next passes through the pharynx, shared with the...

appendages had evolved in many amazing ways.. Poetic translations of this poem (by Robert Weill - French, G.G. Simpson - English and L. Chadwick - English) can be found in his 1988 sequel ..