She works away day and night,
bent over her darning-egg,
an end of thread between her lips,
mending all manner of things.
Ever new holes, new ladders.
Sometimes she nods off
just for a moment
or for a century. Then,
pulling herself together,
she is back at her needle work.
How tiny she has become,
tiny, wrinkled and blind!
With her thimble she feels for the holes in the world
and dams and dams