The Weight of Nothing
Anonymous
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a coal-mouse asked a wild dove.
“Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer.
“In that case I must tell you a marvelous story,” the coal-mouse said.
“I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow,
not heavily, not in a raging blizzard, no,
just like in a dream, without any violence.
Since I didn’t have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling
on the twigs and needles of my branch.
Their number was exactly 3,741,952.
When the next snowflake dropped onto the branch —
nothing more than nothing, as you say — the branch broke off.”
Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away.
The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter,
thought about the story for awhile and finally said to herself:
“Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come about in the world.”
