"Happiness"
I have been taught never to brag but now
I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
from the stubborn earth: does it offend you
to watch me working in it,
touching my hands to the greening tips or
tearing the yellow stalk back, so wild
the living and the dead both
snap off in my hands?
The neighbor with his stuttering
fingers, the neighbor with his broken
love: each comes up my drive
to receive his pitying,
accustomed consolations, watches me
work in silence awhile, rises in anger,
walks back. Does it offend them to watch me
not mourning with them but working
fitfully, fruitlessly, working
the way the bees work, which is to say
by instinct alone, which looks like pleasure?
I can stand for hours among the sweet
narcissus, silent as a point of bone.
I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer
than your grief. It is such a small thing
to be proud of, a garden. Today
there were scrub jays, quail,
a woodpecker knocking at the white-
and-black shapes of trees, and someone's lost rabbit
scratching under the barberry: is it
( indiscriminate? Should it shrink back, wither, )

"60"
The forced forsythia wet on the counter
because the first vase she chose was broken

The stirring in the tight buds when winter's
seal on the storehouse of daylight is broken

The meal without you I eat with my fingers
The slick give when the shrimp shells are broken

I carry this watch because the face tells
the time although the hands are broken

The emperor's men who thought the rebellion
would stop if the children's arms were broken

For the emperor's windows hurled stones made
from the stone houses the emperor left broken

The emperor's squads of heroic women
who touch the stripped men and deliver them broken

In my pockets bits of unused tickets
Smelling of smoke Borrowed Blue Broken

How she scrabbled on the floor to assemble
the pieces of what my sons had broken

Forgive me my stranger Whose eyes I can't meet
For what's beyond healing now What's broken

Shall I stop with the dumb leaper in my chest
On and on Keeping bad time Faithful Broken
--Suzanne Gardinier, from Today: 101 Ghazals

http://harpers.org/archive/2011/12/0083723

It was autumn in San Francisco, a holiday. While doctors golfed and dined out in San Francisco, winter came to the old man in the bed beside me. . . .

http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008639

In a detailed and well-crafted story by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, the New York Times takes a close look today at the Obama Administration’s program of targeted killings, and finds that the president is personally running the show: . . .

http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008631

Dear Readers, . . .

I have been participating in a group working on goal-setting and would like to give them a parting gift. I'm looking for poems about goals: setting them, reaching them, reframing them, etc. Positive, natch, but also about the work spent to reach a goal.

Please, thank you, and here:

Searching for Moons
--Carol Ann Duffy

There is something to be said but I, for one,
forget. That star went out more years ago
than we can count. Its ghosts see dinosaurs.

The brain says No to the Universe, Prove it,
but the heart is susceptible, pining for a look,
a kind word. Some are brought to their knees,

pleading in dead language at a deaf ear. Spaceships
float in nothing in the dark, searching for moons
to worship with their fish eyes. It must be love.

http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008638

Syrian government forces killed at least 108 civilians, including 49 children, in Houla, a rebel-held village near Homs. Activists and witnesses said the Syrian army shelled the town with tank fire and mortars during the day, then sent militiamen to kill people house by house that night. The Syrian government claimed that its soldiers had been attacked by terrorists, who then shot and stabbed civilians. “We unequivocally deny the responsibility of government forces,” said foreign-ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi. The United Nations Security Council condemned Syria for the artillery and tank attacks, but avoided assigning responsibility for the close-range massacre of civilians.[1][2][3] Egypt held the preliminary round of its first presidential elections since the February 2011 uprising that forced out Hosni Mubarak. Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Mursi and Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Shafiq won the right to face each other in the final round of voting next month, prompting thousands to gather in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “The choice can’t be between a religious state and an autocratic state,” said one protester. A mob set fire to Shafiq’s campaign headquarters, and third-place finisher Hamdin Sabbahi demanded a recount, alleging that hundreds of thousands of serving police officers had voted, in contravention of Egyptian law. “There were many violations, and I think that every one is serious,” said election observer and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, “but collectively they did not affect the basic integrity of the election.”[4][5][6] The Daily Caller website announced that it would give away one 9mm pistol engraved with the Bill of Rights each week until November’s U.S. presidential election, and a vial purportedly containing blood drawn from Ronald Reagan after he was shot in 1981 was withdrawn from auction in response to criticism and donated to the Reagan Presidential Foundation. “I was a real fan of Reaganomics,” wrote the consignor, “and felt that President Reagan himself would rather see me sell it.”[7][8][9][10] Hewlett-Packard announced it would cut 27,000 jobs by 2014, Russia tested an ICBM capable of penetrating a planned missile-defense shield over Europe, and NATO signed a $1.7 billion deal to purchase surveillance drones from Northrup Grumman. “The decision to move ahead with the Alliance Ground Surveillance program in today’s difficult economic climate,” said NATO’s deputy secretary general, “sends a powerful message.”[11][12][13][14][15][16] . . .

http://www.saidthegramophone.com/archives/really_dont.php

Fairport Convention - "Both Sides Now" [buy]
Carly Rae Jepsen - "Both Sides Now" [buy]

It don't change: we really don't know clouds at all. Or love. Or life. We are dizzied by moons and Junes and ferris wheels, by synths and strums, men's and women's voices. We are seduced by time's backward creaking and forward skim. We don't see the backs of mirrors or the movies playing behind people's eyes. Our lovers are only so naked. But we have songs about these things - we have that, songs new & old, telling us glad and melancholy about all we do not know.

Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee
Our love and toil in the years to be;
When we are grown and take our place, 
As men and women with our race.

Father in heaven who lovest all,
O help Thy children when they call;
That they may build from age to age
An undefiled heritage.

Teach us to rule ourselves alway,
Controlled and cleanly night and day;
That we may bring, if need arise,
No maimed or worthless sacrifice.

Teach us the strength that cannot seek,
By deed or thought, to hurt the weak;
That, under Thee, we may possess
Man's Strength to comfort man's distress.

Teach us delight in simple things,
And Mirth that has no bitter springs;
Forgiveness free of evil done,
And Love to all men 'neath the sun!

Land of our Birth, our faith, our pride,
For whose dear sake our fathers died;
O Motherland, we pledge to thee
Head, heart and hand through the years to be.

Once again, Memorial Day weekend defeats my posting-on-Sunday schedule. Sorry!

This week in the NYR 2012 collection: ( two stories in Once Upon a Time and Mordant's Need - Stephen R. Donaldson )

Want to join in the fun? The journey to writing your own NYR story starts with the list of prompts: now in google doc and html table flavors.