On est grand, très grand par l’amour
et on est plus grand par les pleurs,
par les pleurs!—
Jacques Offenbach, Les contes d’Hoffmann (1880), Epilogue
“Love makes us great—very great—
And greater yet, weeping, by our tears!”
Here Offenbach's last libretto ends,
Celebrating the poet Hoffmann and his drunken friends.
Snowflakes pile up, and avalanches slide,
Thoughts through innumerable synapses glide,
Birds flock, starlings murmurate at dusk, fish swim in schools,
And countless seeds float freely on the breeze.
"They" is life's exponential rule.
Better thus not hold back those tears,
Love is one, and they are many:
The cosmos runs on multiplicity.*
But taught not to be a crybaby as a boy,
I learned the lesson and reject such fears!
*Charlie Wood, "Why 'Many' Is Displacing 'Small' as the Hottest Frontier in Physics," Quanta Magazine, citing P. W. Anderson, “More Is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Nature of the Hierarchical Structure of Science,” Science 177, no. 4047 (August 4, 1972), https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_different_PWA.pdf?mc_cid=3146b89807&mc_eid=ad6a8f5ad8
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