Nothing Isn’t Nothing

Parmenides and his goddess
Were on to something, back when

Trying to do cutting-edge thinking
Through verse wasn’t so shocking—

The antithesis of existing can’t exist
Except as a name for what doesn’t exist

And by its name’s nature can’t ever.
Here, we won’t follow Parmenides

Through the halls of what this means
For what truly is and how it changes,

How what is could ever seem to cease.
Two other things are interesting, the more

And the less. First, the less interesting
But still puzzling thing is the usefulness,

Paradoxically, of the nothing that isn’t
And can’t be or else it’s not nothing—

The greater part of mathematics
And empiricism—that is to say, of the real

Sorcery, prediction—is dependent
On keeping nothing as a presence

In all those equations, equivalencies,
Observations, and extrapolations.

But even more interesting, to us, as terms
And the concepts floating about them

Ourselves, is that it’s in the essence—
Or, perhaps better to say, the behavior—

Of a name to name things that aren’t
Except as names (imagination, fiction)

And things that, by the nature of the name
They are, can’t be, can’t ever be, never,

Like, for instance, nothing.
That’s a magic somewhere near the outer

Darkness of physics and metaphysics—
That names can truly conjure what isn’t,

And we are this which is conjured, present
Concepts of the absolutely absent.

Why would you wonder why we think
We’re your and our own ghosts?