In the home
Jablonska, she’s OK, she puts up with it all,
and still, like a princess, she walks among us.
Still ties her scarfs and fixes her hair –
she has three sons in heaven, one’ll look in, any moment.“If they’d survived the war, I wouldn’t be here.
Winter with one, summer with the other”.
Thus she’s worked it all out.
She’s so very sure.And still this head nods above us,
and asks about our unkilled children,
because,
“for the holidays she’ll be asked by the third one”.Surely he’ll drive up in a large gilded carriage
drawn by, and why not, by white turtledoves,
so that all would see
and would not forget.Till even Miss Maria will sometimes smile,
Miss Maria of the nursing staff,
with compassion for us from all the permanents,
with right to holidays and Sundays off.Wisława Szymborska