CANTO 41 Probe again
P
robe again. Where will it lead?Off into unexplored reaches. Tweak.
Weigh it in, percolate, chocolate, a nugget.
Peristalsis, paralysis, prune juice.
Nibble on a cheese, Nibelungenlied, noisome.
Periwinkles flatten cakes of ale that piss up a rope.
Notice flecks of light in nonsense sentences.
Nothing that may be something. Zero is not-zero.
Efficient robots wearing metal fatigues
are under orders to KEEP THIS SPACE CLEAR.
It may be emptiness but it’s all we have.
It may be just a surface but it’s clean.
Have you heard how zero is being invented?
I don’t mean mathematical zero
emerging out of Buddhist calm and Arab cipher.
I mean the empty null nothing zero
occupying THIS SPACE CLEAR KEEP.
This is the zero that when you add it to a number
it just clings so that that number is never the same again.
It becomes what we in poetry call a can’ted number.
Other numbers will work normally whereas this one can’t.
There is no name yet for this zero.
People have tried names like discord (the Discordians), distemper,
disappointment— there’s even the demon Dis, surrounded
by my zero and not even knowing it!
Many computer malfunctions and systems failures
are due to can’ted numbers.
It always seemed to work.
CAN’T KEEP THIS SPACE CLEAR!
When you cube it this zero swells up into the shape of a cube
which I have just done CLEAR KEEP CUBE THIS SPACE.
This is the zero that when you subtract a number from it
that number is never the same again, it becomes a hungry number.
I will now subtract a number from this zero
THIS SPACE HUNGRY KEEP CLEAR!
The effect of hungry numbers on other numbers is to make them
numb numbers. KEEP THIS CLEAR SPACE NUMB!
Since the usual meaning of zero
is the total absence of QUANTITY considered as a quantity,
THIS zero really is the total absence of QUALITY
considered as a quantity.
THE TOTAL ABSENCE OF QUANTITY
AND THE TOTAL ABSENCE OF QUALITY ARE THE SAME.
The beginning got lost somewhere along toward the end.
It’s best left to its own culture.