The poem tells the story of a marriage in which the husband wanted his wife to adore him, and wasn't satisfied with her genuine love. By the time the couple has grown old, the husband has come to recognise the wife's love.
The poem is spoken by a 'we', whose migration experience is likened to waiting in a queue to get into heaven, and finally being turned away by God and returned to earth.
The poem evokes the experience of reading in a Polish newspaper on board a flight to Poland the news of the arrest of the speaker's friends by the Polish secret police, ZOMO. The speaker describes her poems as landing with her at the airport in Poland, carrying a 'tongue paralysed with fear of force'. The poem is alluding to political repressions during the period of martial law introduced in Poland by the Polish Communist regime in December 1981.
The poem describes the home made by the speaker in a 'Dolina Szczęścia' (Valley of Happiness), with her son's cot placed among the sun's rays slanting 'Między konarami eukaliptusów' ('between eucalyptus branches'). The poem ends with the image of a friendly Gallah which 'uparcia powtarza/imiona mieszkańców okolicznych wzgórz' ('stubbornly repeats/ the names of those who live in the surrounding mountains').
The poem is addressed to the speaker's young son, recalling how the speaker lived in her imagination as a child just as her son does now. It ends with the speaker saying that she can no longer wander through fairytale terrain like her son, but must 'live'.
A poem about the cyclical quality of human existence, or the 'merry-go-round of life' ('Karuzela życia').
A poem that affirms a deep attachment to the poet's adopted homeland (implicitly, Australia). The poem takes the form of a prayer or plea to the adopted homeland to be hospitable to the speaker. This country is characterised as a 'guardian of liberal violators of traditional values' ('opiekunko liberalnych gwałcicieli tradycyjnych wartości') and 'a country of many-coloured mercenaries of imaginary democracy' ('kraju różnokolorowych najemników urojonej demokracji').
