Eric Bourdon - Blog
All and nothing – A whimsical text of free poetry

     Dear friends of poetry !

     Is everything really everything if it is not at the same time nothing? And reduced to nothing, can he find himself back ?…

     The following text of free poetry, All and nothing, finally tells you all there’s to know about everything, and also about nothing or not much. How could you know anything about everything if you don’t know anything about nothing….? No translation problem, what is written is exactly what is meant !

     However, the whimsical text All and nothing is only (for now) the best possible translation of the French text Tout et rien, written in 2019, which has received several prizes for free poetry in France.

All and nothing

In the beginning, all was perfect !
Nothing existed, only what existed without the help of anything…
What was this All, then, which did not depend on anything to exist ?
Nobody knows anything about it, and it is quite strange !
But nothing else existed, only this All that held without anything.


And yet, this All was still missing something…
Because he knew very well that he was not nothing : neither a small, nor a big nothing.
And this All strictly depended on nothing at all !
So he didn’t know anything about the experience of not being much…
This All was not really all !


So, all fell apart !
All has become nothing, or not much…
All has become the opposite of all.
All was no longer certain of anything, not even of being all.
All was screwed up !


All, reduced to nothing, then acted as if nothing had happened.
He contented himself with little…
Then, casually, he looked for a bit more than nothing.
Just to improve the ordinary !
All was already no longer satisfied with nothing…


Slowly, day after day, All was rebuilding himself.
It was not easy at all, but we have nothing for nothing !
However, if All hadn’t forgotten anything…
He would have remembered that when we are all one day…
We are all forever !


While he took himself for nothing, or for very little…
All was in fact still all, while being nothing.
When he was chasing pretty much everything…
It was after all, without knowing it, towards himself that he was running !
All was not lost ! All was playing !


In all honesty, All had always been equal to himself…
All was all, and nothing at the same time.
And when he was playing at being nothing, he was chasing everything !
Being all and nothing at the same time, All was really all.
All was in all !

Text in pdf version

   Tout et rien – Texte de poésie libre fantaisiste