Brooklyn Girl's 'Mysterious' Poem Inspires the World

The Hasidic community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has watched one of its daughters shoot to international fame over the course of a week.

It all started when Chanie Gorkin, who is apparently an 11th grader at Beth Rivkah High School in Crown Heights, submitted a clever poem called “Worst Day Ever?” to PoetryNation.com.

The poem reads:

Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don’t try to convince me that
There’s something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don’t last.
And it’s not true that
It’s all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be attained
Only if one’s surroundings are good
It’s not true that good exists
I’m sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It’s all beyond my control
And you’ll never in a million years hear me say
Today was a very good day

Now read it from bottom to top, the other way,
And see what I really feel about my day.

After the poetry site posted Gorkin’s submission online, it quickly made its way across the Atlantic.

Mashable reports that London resident Ronnie Joice “spotted the poem tacked to the wall of a bar in North London,” then posted it to social media.

Her piece has since become a viral sensation.

Gorkin’s brother, Shimon, posted a news story about his sister’s poem on Facebook. “That’s my sister!” he wrote.

“So, my daughter Chanie wrote this poem last fall as a school assignment and submitted it to Poetry Nation,” wrote her dad, Baruch, in a post of his own. “In the last few days the thing went totally viral, apparently after being pinned up on a wall of a [London] bar... “

Gorkin has been mentioned in quite a few Crown Heights newsletters and announcements over the years, and her creativity seems to have amassed a fan base within her own community, as well.

Salvador Litvak, who blogs as The Accidental Talmudist, calls the poem a “spectacular meditation by Chanie Gorkin of Crown Heights, Brooklyn.”

We’ve reached out to Gorkin and her family to see how they’re handling all this love and admiration flooding in from around the world.