«Singularity», Marie Howe

«Singularity» 

Poem

Marie Howe

[1950, Rochester, Nueva York]

2025 Pulitzer Prize Poetry

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?

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 noum

only a tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All everything   home

Singularity,

performed by the poet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6rrf1tMy80

An intense and eloquent poem. With great emotional power as it elves into the complexities into human heart. 

The verse «For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you» is from Walt Whitman´s poem «Song of Myself», who also explores these themes, as the deep sense of unity and interconnectedness between individuals... highlighting that the fundamental elements that make up one person are also share by all others.

Until the next reading,

Cecilia Olguin Gianelli

Notas

- Marie Howe. Poetry Foundation:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/marie-howe

- Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman. Poetry Foundation:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version