Zero Plus Anything Is a World
Four less one is three.
Three less two is one.
One less three
is what, is who,
remains.
The first cell that learned to divide
learned to subtract.
Recipe:
add salt to hunger.
Recipe:
add time to trees.
Zero plus anything
is a world.
This one
and no other,
unhidden,
by each breath changed.
Recipe:
add death to life.
Recipe:
love without swerve what this will bring.
Sister, father, mother, husband, daughter.
Like a cello
forgiving one note as it goes,
then another.
—2010
Credit
Originally published in The Beauty (Knopf, 2015); all rights reserved. Copyright © by Jane Hirshfield. Used by permission of the author, all rights reserved.
Author
Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield is the author of nine collections of poetry, includingThe Beauty: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), which was long listed for the National Book Award. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017.
Date Published: 2015-03-03
Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/zero-plus-anything-world