There was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side

There was no light, there was no dark, nor shape of any kind

There were no stars or planet Mars, or protons to collide

And furthermore, to underscore this total lacking state

There was no here, there was no there, because there was no space

And in this endless void which can’t be thought of as a place

There was no time, and so no passing minutes, hours, days

Of all the paradoxes that belabor common sense

I think this one’s the greatest, this ‘time before events’

Because how did we get from nothing to infinitely dense?

From immeasurably small to inconceivably immense?

But before we get unmoored from the question at the start

Let’s take a breath and marvel at when math becomes an art

Because we don’t have to understand it to know there was a time

Where there was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side