No Nation’s Notation

There’s something known as nothing,
Zero, śūnya, șifr, zilch,
And people want to claim it,

To be able to assert
They belong to the nation
That discovered nothing first.

India was the leading
Contender for a long while,
But recent claims have been made

For, among other places,
Cambodia, Malaysia,
Independently Peru.

It’s only the notation,
Of course—who was first to use
A symbol just for nothing.

Words for absences and voids,
Abysses, emptinesses,
And nothing in general

Preceded all notation,
All the mathematical
Working out of nothing’s rules.

But still it’s something, isn’t
It, this concept of nothing,
Which must be lack of something—

Yes, we have no bananas—
Can’t be nothing of nothing,
Which it is in notation,

The something or other sign
Of nothing no thing at all,
Without which notation

Math can do nothing much
Or nothing nearly so much
As with zip. Duly noted.