Zero Time

Keeping Zero Time

By Roy D. Follendore III

Our clock of standards

finds space and time,

defines our tests as

sharp instants,

instruments calibrated as differences,

but not delineated in between.

This is a very ancient cryptogram

absolute and fine,

with no absolute movements

not of our kind.

It is mechanical, electrical,

and transparently all but immortal.

Ovations oblivious of the silent beat of a third,

ordered harmony rise up the words.

Applauds as if it stands in line,

as each parade must pass,

to be counted, to an end

to also be forgotten.

Time moves like human lives

incremented, arrayed, as individual pins,

is of the earth, becomes the earth,

is of the air, becomes the air,

always relentlessly transparent

flowing toward the ocean universal purple void.

If tongues of Pharaohs

long now dust could speak

half as well as or even more

that they might wish to tell tomorrow

will or can or could be in store

while keeping some perspective

of our absolute minds eye,

they would remain mute.

They could say nothing of their hereafter,

for they knew nothing before their mark,

and certainly no certainty thereafter.

Their singular moment

was defined within a rulers width.

Always lost we

look for some single sign,

thus protected behind temporal disease

that is not so accurate as it appears nor benign.

No such instant reference made by sound

describes where things are in a single instant

or where by absolute they should be tomorrow found.

We are as unspecified and relative as singular quarks

with this enormous quantum soup not easy understood,

and thus it is not of our natural line,

for it is far too, too broad, too dark, too deep, this sand

to keep some whispered notion of Zero Time.

Every calibrator worth his salt knows that zero can only exist because we specify it. It therefore can not exist because we have no technical means to absolutely specify it. The acceptable latency between what is specified and what is found to exist is the tolerance. There is no tolerance for the absolute difference because it can not be measured. Einstein has shown that this intangible can become large and depends on subjective perspective. Zero Time is therefore a poem about the human perspective of relativity.

Temporal zero-point or zero-time

Temporal zero-point or zero-time (abbreviation: t0) = the time which is the ultimate 'origin' of all the temporal relations expressed by the tense form, i.e. the time to which the times of all the situations referred to in the sentence are directly or indirectly related, and which is not itself represented as dependent on any other (more basic) time. In English, the temporal zero-point is nearly always the time of utterance (speech time, coding time). However, when the time of decoding (hearing, reading) the message is later than the coding time, it is possible for the speaker to choose the former as temporal zero-point, as when a pre-recorded radio programme begins with It's 5 p.m. now — time for our weekly programme about pets.

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