So he once was. He invented zero.
In an uncertain country. Under a star
now perhaps gone dark. Between dates
to which no one will swear. Without even
a questionable name. Without leaving
beneath his zero any pearls of wisdom
about life, which is like what. Or a legend
that one day he scribbled zero
on a plucked rose and bound it in a bouquet.
That before he died he took to the desert
on a hundred-humped camel. That he nodded off
beneath the palme d’or. That he will awaken
when everything is counted
down to the last grain of sand. What a man.
He escaped our notice through the crack
between fact and fiction. Immune
to every fate. He shakes off
every shape I give him.
Silence grew over him, without a voice’s scar.
Absence mimicked the horizon.
Zero writes itself.