TV

Babylon 5
1x21 The Quality of Mercy
1x22 Chrysalis [season finale]
Long-time readers may remember that I tried to finish the first season of Babylon 5 before I went to New York last summer -- five months ago. Ha! Well, anyway, I've finally done it.
The Quality of Mercy is one of the series' best stand-alone episodes so far; Chrysalis is overrated, one of those season finales that confuses complications and "not resolving anything" with events of importance and cliffhangers -- thankfully, a style that's now mostly out of fashion. And where Mercy is all very well written and performed, Chrysalis has some dreadful daytime-soap-level relationship scenes. Ouch.

The Devil's Whore
Part 3 (of 4)

Heroes
3x09 It's Coming

Little Dorrit
Part 11 (of 14)

The Sarah Jane Adventures
2x09 The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith Part One

Poetry

Fall of the Rebel Angels: Poems 1996-2006 by Andy Brown
Part II (pages 37-48)

Poem of the Day: December Night

by W. S. Merwin

This week Poem of the Day is celebrating the start of December, with a poem each day somehow related to the month.

After a pair of English poets, it's time for a pair of Americans. Born in 1927 and coming to fame as an anti-war poet during the 1960s, Merwin is decidedly more modern than Southey or Keats, though his poem might not be so different...

The cold slope is standing in darkness
But the south of the trees is dry to the touch

The heavy limbs climb into the moonlight bearing feathers
I came to watch these
White plants older at night
The oldest
Come first to the ruins

And I hear magpies kept awake by the moon
The water flows through its
Own fingers without end

Tonight once more
I find a single prayer and it is not for men

Tomorrow, a woman. Shocking I know.