The Invention of Zero
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?
