In The Beginning ...

The internet served up something juicy today.

A scandal?  Injustice? Another presidential gaffe?

Well yes, of course, but that's not what I'm referring to right now.

How about something as simple as the Singularity!  Do you know what that is?  Does anyone really know?

So how enjoyable then, to skip the science, and go straight into poetry.  In three formats:

The first is the author Marie Howe, reading her poem Singularity, at the 2018 Universe in Verse gathering, overlaid upon an animation with background music:

Followed by the text of her poem (slightly edited since that inaugural reading):

SINGULARITY
by Marie Howe

        (after Stephen Hawking)

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were? 

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money — 

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone 

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept. 

For every atom belonging to me as good Belongs to you.   Remember?
Belongs to you.   Remember? 

There was no   Nature.    No
 them.   No tests 

to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if 

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French; 

would that we could wake up   to what we were
— when we were ocean    and before that 

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not 

at all — nothing 

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness. 

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened? 

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb      no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with 

is is is is is 

All   everything   home

And finally, since I really needed to hear it one more time, Marie Howe just reading the initial version (with a little more background introduction) at the 2018 Universe in Verse:

The Universe in Verse: Marie Howe reads "Singularity" (after Stephen Hawking) from Maria Popova on Vimeo.

Enjoy!  Who knew we could learn so much from poets ;-)