Today's Stichomancy for Stephen Hawking

The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis:

tide-walled city waits The drumming thunders that announce brute battle at her gates.

Southward a hundred windy leagues, through storms that blind and bar, Our cheated cruisers search the waves, our cap- tains seek the war; But here the port of peril is; the foeman's dread- noughts ride Sullen and black against the moon, upon a sullen tide.