“The Singularity” by Marie Howe

(after Stephen Hawking)

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
¹ 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. ²   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 ³

Teach a Facing History lesson featuring this resource.

• 1Reference to Stephen Hawking's theory of "singularity," which posits that our collective origins stem from a single point in the universe, suggesting we all came from the same place billions of years ago.
• 2Reference to Walt Whitman's 1892 poem "Song of Myself," suggesting we all come from the same parts of the universe.
• 3"The Singularity", from NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Marie Howe. Copyright © 2024 by Marie Howe. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.