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  • The Invention of Zero
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The Invention of Zero

Andrew Philip

What like was it
this abundant world

where nothing was not—
no neat ring

shackling us to absence,
no way not

to count or be counted—
where everything

filled without this
empty nest of a number

perched in the mind,
everything swerved

its wide white oblivion;
and could we,

given the state of our knowledge,
live with the lack of it

unable to quantify
certain populations

in the wild, the exhaustion
of our reserves,

the number and intensity
of cries in the night?


Andrew Philip

from The Ambulance Box (Cambridge: Salt, 2009)

Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

Tags:

absence nothingness
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Andrew Philipb.1975

Andrew Philip was chosen as a Scottish Poetry Library New Voice in 2006. He has published two full collections of poetry.
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