A TOUCH OF NOTHING

anyone who strains to see nothing
and succeeds, has not seen any of it,
for nothingness isn’t anything
that in principle could be felt or unfelt,
and, if it did, I bet it would immediately
strike whoever did blind and deaf and dumb
for as long as he would sense it,
so that, in the end,
he would sense just nothing at all

and yet, how strange, it does affect us somehow,
and no sooner you think of it, you feel its grip
then and there, a kind of chilling drift of air,
climbing through your legs and ruffling
the leftovers of your hair,
but air, though thin (like your legs),
is also something as any other thing,
bound to be perceived or not,
but even when not, it is not simply nothing

stranger a thing than nothing is sheer beingness,
so trivial and inaccessible at once you can hardly define it,
though you hold it all the time,
of course nothing is simpler than simple being,
and say nothing about all those still stranger things
that lie between being and being nothing,
as you and me and all the things
that simply are without meaning
to be or not to be no thing