Elfriede Czurdas's new poetry collection "dunkelziffer" reveals how the world astonishingly resonates both literally and in coded, enumerated forms. The need to fix every phenomenon in the undeniable certainty of a numerical sequence is not merely a dominant contemporary technique; it spans all cultures around the globe. Numbers are encountered at every turn, whether in the numerology of magic and mysticism, in the proportions of harmony theory, or in the algorithms of computer programs and statistics. They assist in organizing and interpreting the world, reducing complexity to the manageable. The "Dunkelziffer" refers to those hidden events that are added to the officially recorded figures. As an imagined number, it extrapolates from what is captured to what is not. The allure of these poems lies in following this "unclean," multifaceted practice of numbers in various contexts, where numbers are not just abstract symbols but also words, sounds, fictions, architectures, sensibilities, and meanings.