Internet users are sharing a touching poem that was allegedly found by nurses who were sorting out the belongings of a deceased lonely old man. We have verified the veracity of this story.

In February–March 2025, a post about an old man who died in a nursing home spread on Russian-language social networks. The text said: “Everyone believed that he passed away without leaving any valuable trace in it. Later, when the nurses were sorting through his meager belongings, they discovered this poem:

When you come in to wake me up in the morning, who do you see, nurse?
The old man is capricious, out of habit, still living somehow.
Half blind, half fool.
"Living" It’s fitting to put it in quotation marks.”

Then the lyrical hero of the poem talks about his life, which flashed by too quickly, and calls on the indifferent nurse to look at him more closely and see the personality behind the patient. Publications of this poem are gaining millions views on VKontakte and Facebook.

As the results of a search for the text of the poem showed, the current wave of its popularity is far from the first. It wanders By Networks already more ten years.

The earliest publication of these lines “Verified” was found on “Stihi.ru”. This poem was originally published in 2013 by site user Evgeniy Archipenko under the name “Capricious Old Man”. The poems were accompanied by a short accompanying text, which became the basis for further publications on social networks: “When this old man died in a nursing home in a small Australian town, everyone believed that he had passed away without leaving any valuable trace in it. Later, when the nurses were sorting through his meager belongings, they discovered this poem. Its meaning and content impressed the employees so much that copies of the poem were quickly distributed to all hospital employees. One nurse took a copy to Melbourne... The old man's only will has since appeared in Christmas magazines across the country, as well as in psychology magazines. And this old man, who died a beggar in a godforsaken town in Australia, is now blowing up the Internet with the depths of his soul. Remember this verse the next time you meet an old person. And think about the fact that sooner or later you will also be like him or her. The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or touched. They must be felt by the heart!”

Two years later the author added clarification: “This poem is the author’s (that is, my) translation of the English-language poem Cranky Old Man, widely known on the Internet.” Below he provided the original poems.

Another year later Arkhipenko added link to publication "Russian newspaper", telling the story of the creation of the original poem. The publication says it was written by a Texas poet. David Griffith, however, also not from scratch - this is a male version of the poem Crabbit Old Woman (“grumpy old woman” - English), which was composed by the Scottish nurse Phyllis McCormack in 1966.

The poem was initially distributed anonymously, but after it was published by Nursing Mirror in 1972, McCormack wrote a letter to the editor in which admitted in his own authorship. She wrote a poem for the Sunnyside Psychiatric Hospital newsletter, she said. In the article "A poem that is discovered again and again» oral history specialist Joanna Bornat quotes an interview with McCormack's son published by the Daily Mail in March 1998. He said: “My mother Phyllis McCormack wrote this poem in the early 60s while she was a nurse at Sunnyside Hospital in Montrose. It was originally called "Take a Closer Look, Nurse" and was written for a small magazine published only for Sunnyside. Phyllis was very shy and submitted her piece anonymously. One copy of the magazine ended up in the hands of a patient at Ashludie Hospital in Dundee. She copied the poem by hand and kept it in her bedside table. After her death, a copy was found and sent to the Sunday Post, attributing the authorship to this patient.”

As for the photograph of an elderly man having breakfast in a hospital room that accompanies most viral publications of the poem, it was done in 2014 by the photographer of the Kirovo-Chepetsk publication “Pro City” Andrey Obukhov and has nothing to do with the text of “The Capricious Old Man”.

Thus, the viral poem is the author’s translation of the English poem Cranky Old Man, which, in turn, is a free adaptation of the poem Crabbit Old Woman. It was written by Scottish nurse Phyllis McCormack in 1966.

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