The message came by the carriers of doom
with books, pamphlets, primers.
These government reports were exportations of our events
to a government far away.
I discovered the classroom was a strong drink of whiskey—
method and theory deadened the wounds.
Teaching was a song of alcohol—
silver rockets in the glare.
Diane Glancy is a long-time writer. The words, “We must be sparing,” came from her Aunt Martha who lived through the Depression. Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. Her latest books: Island of the Innocent, a Consideration of the Book of Job (2020), A Line of Driftwood, the Ada Blackjack Story, (2021), Home Is the Road, Wandering the Land, Shaping the Spirit (2022), “Psalm to Whom(e) (2023), Quadrille, Christianity and the Early New England Indians (2024), The Cubist and the Lost Notebooks of the Painter’s Wife (2025), and Lazarus, the Intended Writings, forthcoming in 2026.
