Network users are divided by a touching poem that nurses allegedly found, who analyzed the things of the deceased lonely old man. We checked the truthfulness of this story.

In February - March of 2025, a post about an old man who died in a nursing home spread in Russian -speaking social networks. The text said: “Everyone believed that he had passed away, leaving no valuable trace in it. Later, when the nurses disassembled his meager belongings, they found this poem:

Entering me in the morning, who do you see, a nurse?
The old man is capricious, out of habit, still living somehow.
Half -haired, half -bite.
"Living" Take it in quotation marks. ”

Further, the lyrical hero of the poem talks about his life, which flashed too quickly, and calls for an indifferent nurse to look at him more closely and see the patient behind the patient. The publications of this poem are gaining Millions Views On VKontakte and Facebook.

As shown by the search results in the text of the poem, the current wave of its popularity is far from the first. It Wandering By Network already more Ten years.

The most early publication of these lines “verified” was found in “Poems.ru”. Initially, this poem was Published In 2013, the user of the site Yevgeny Arkhipenko under the name "capricious old man". Poems were accompanied by a short accompanying text, which became the basis for further publications in social networks: “When this old man died in a nursing home in a small Australian town, everyone believed that he had passed away, leaving no valuable trace in it. Later, when the nurses disassembled his meager belongings, they found this poem. Its meaning and content impressed employees so much that copies of the poem quickly dispersed through all the hospital employees. One nurse took a copy to Melbourne ... The only testament of the old man has since appeared in Christmas magazines throughout the country, as well as in magazines for psychologists. And this old man, who passed away in a life in the God of a forgotten town in Australia, now explodes the Internet with a depth of his soul. Remember this verse the next time you meet an old man. 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 an author’s (that is, my) translation of the widely -famous Cranky Old Man widely known on the network. Below he also brought the original poems.

After another year, Arkhipenko Added Link to publication "Russian newspaper", Telling the story of the creation of an original poem. The publication says that he was written by the Texas poet David Griffithhowever, too, not from scratch - this is the male version of the poem Crabbit Old Woman (“The Grinded Old Women” - English), which was composed by the Scottish nurse Phillis McCormak in 1966.

Initially, the poem spread anonymously, however, after it was published in 1972 by a specialized publication for Nursing Mirror nurses, McCormak wrote a letter to the editorial office in which I admitted in its authorship. According to her, she composed a poem for the ballot of the Sunnyside psychiatric hospital. In the article "A poem that is opened again and again»Specialist in oral history Joanna Bornat The interview of the son of McCormak, published by the Daily Mail newspaper in March 1998, quotes. He said: “My mother Fillis McCormak wrote this poem in the early 60s, when she worked as a nurse in the Sunnyside hospital in Montroza. Initially, it was called "Get looking, nurse" and was written for a small magazine published only for Sunnyside. Phillis was very shy and sent her work anonymously. One copy of the magazine fell into the hands of the patient of the Ashludie hospital in Dundee. She rewrote the poem by hand and stored in her bedside table. After her death, they found a copy and sent to the Sunday Post, attributing to this patient. ”

As for the photograph of the elderly man who has breakfast in the hospital ward, accompanying most viral publications of the poem, it was Made In 2014, the photographer of the Kirovo-Chepetsk publication “Pro City” Andrei Obukhov has nothing to do with the text of the “capricious old man”.

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

Photo on the cover: Pixabay