Vermeer
So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.
---Wisława Szymborska
---translated by Clare Cavanagh & Stanisław Barańczak
---found in Map: Collected and Last Poems (2015; originally published in War, 2009)