We come into this world with sealed orders.

Soren Kierkegaard

The question we need to answer is what happens when the zero-brane on the Hitchin moduli space is concentrated at the special point of the degenerate torus like the one marked on the above picture, at which the neck collapses. Mathematicians call it an orbifold singularity.

Edward Frankel, Love & Math, 224

I am hearing the shape of the rain
Take the shape of the tent and believe it

James Dickey, “In the Mountain Tent”

To have faith is to acknowledge the absolute materiality of existence while acknowledging at the same time the compulsion toward transfiguring order that seems not outside of things but within them, and within you – not an idea imposed upon the world, but a vital, answering instinct.

Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss, 76-77

So she must have been pleased with us,
who did not forgo our heritage

at the grave-edge;
she must have been pleased

with the straggling company of the brush and quill
who did not deny their birthright;

she must have been pleased with us,
for she looked so kindly at us

under her drift of veils,
and she carried a book.

H.D., “Tribute to the Angels,” #35

Nothing is too incredible to believe about you. Idiot, simpleton, heartbreaker! … Teach us the magic of the departing shadow, teach us how to smash our hearts into butterflies!

Jack Spicer, “IVth Phase of the Moon,” My Vocabulary Did This to Me, 54