“I like it,” Janine said before she could stop herself. Everyone looked at her as if she should have more to say, so she continued. “I mean, I’ve never read this poem before. And I didn’t like it at first. But I like it. I agree with it.”

“You agree with it,” Lorraine repeated.

“The part about conquering the conquerors,” Janine said bravely.

“Ah,” said Lorraine, putting a finger in her ear. “You were shouting that part.”

“Well,” said Janine. That was what she said sometimes, to keep herself from apologizing. Well.

“But you didn’t like it at first,” Lorraine said.

“No,” Janine said. “I thought it was too simple, and also at the same time confusing. And I didn’t like the word insurgent, in the title,” she said. Across from her, a young woman, whose name she remembered as Laura, nodded. Janine saw that she was holding something white and fuzzy in her lap. A kitten? “I also didn’t know every one of the names.”

The woman shifted her gaze to the fuzzy white mass, and Janine could see that she was knitting a sweater. Was that allowed? She reminded herself that it was not her job to keep order here—even where it was her job, she was not very good at it.

“Whitman—” began Manfred, helpfully.

“Not Whitman,” Janine began. “I know him. And Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

“Neruda, then,” he said.

“Everyone here is responsible for correcting their own ignorance on their own time,” Lorraine said. “Back to the idea of insurgency. What didn’t you like about it?”

“Not the idea, the word,” Janine said. “It made me think of terrorists. And the flames. And the phrase ‘apocalyptic times.’ It sounded … awful.” She was now afraid to ask when the poem was written, but she imagined that it was some time ago, before things were even half as bad. Beth, who had recently begun an internship at the local television station, said that for every terrible thing you heard on the news—a mother backing a carful of children into the water, apartment fires set by jealous boyfriends, robberies committed by idiot thieves—there were several more that they did not even have time to shoot. That had been a revelation.

Lorraine stared at her with such intensity she thought she had better keep speaking. “But then I realized that he was right. Things are bad. They’re getting worse. That a poem could be a voice against the conquerors, that words could be conquerors … I liked that idea. Even the line about the North Pole, which was confusing at first. I realized it made me think of Santa Claus. Last year I was in line to do my Christmas shopping and I heard a little boy—he must have been six or seven—tell his mother Santa Claus was a load of crap. That’s what he said!”

“I don’t remember ever believing in Santa myself,” said Manfred.