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Susanna Clarke weaves magic into her readers’ lives.

The miniseries is full of big ideas about freedom and self-determination.

reflected in the eye of an angel

Are they not   the most angelic of beasts?   Bright
white   & mighty of limb   though hardly suited for flight 
One thousand pounds of hypercarnivorous bear

O fragile child   what do you think   of the cub 
seeing for the first time   their diminishing arctic icescape  
stumbling after her mother from their winter lair?

After Maurice Duruflé’s Messe ‘Cum jubilo’

There’s a moment in the Gloria
when the Father simply leans down,
down to the shepherds, fruit pickers, gleaners,
down to the pregnant, the children, the sick, the injured, the lame,
down to believers, agnostics, artists, scientists, poets—all
abiding in the field in pens like a huge factory-farm flock

with the son now in its center
where the father leans down,
A to B,
and like the worst pain
the mighty organ halts all motion.

those poor poor
shepherds on
My Son’s
frightfully frigid
natal night

brought to Him
a gift,

their single
solitary best
begotten present

a newborn lamb, a

living sacrifice
holy, acceptable

while all I
could think of
before offering

my thanks
to their giving

was, oh, that
poor poor

ewe

If your secret Santa were a Century editor, here’s what you might be getting.

A cellphone’s flashlight beam selects your face
watching from a high branch skeptically—         
We’ve found you now, ghost owl, lodged cryptically
above us, grim observer. Fixed in place,         

With a prayer, I lower my face in a cloud of ginger tea,
inhaling the promise of its sinus-clearing, herbal fire.

I’m learning the names of trees in this quiet township 
past those days of girlhood greenery drifting sideways,

maple, elm, oak, cottonwood, then the nameless ones
autumnal, where the weight of all things sway together

to savor a moment of peace. In a crisis, let us be still 
in the presence of sweet revelation, of the blessed

In her speech accepting the nomination for vice president, Kamala Harris honored past generations of civil rights activists and a new generation standing on their shoulders. Artist Pamela Chatterton-Purdy has long painted works focusing on those women and men on whose shoulders so many now stand, whose stories and struggle inspired new generations.

Sean Gandert’s novel asks us to decide if a man is a saint or a sham.