Secretly, at the northeast corner of barrack 3
the boy watched it come to spring fruition, this

one daisy pushing up above the soil. The guards
never noticed, or paid attention as he knelt down

to water it with part of his daily ration. And so
the daisy raised its single stem as summer came.

Every desperate day he paused briefly to look
and let its splendour enter him on his shuffling way

to the parade ground. Asleep, he dreamed it
gardening itself, multiplying itself with optimistic fever.

The daisy's bright whiteness never left him then, and
even decades later, elderly, he still wakes after dreams

of those gentle petals spreading under the Polish sun,
that one tender flower blooming in the garden of hell.