Andy Newman/The New York Times

It might take the Metropolitan Transportation Authority months to fix a broken escalator, but mess with the World’s Most Depressing Subway Poem and the agency will spring to action in a jiffy.

The poem in question is “A Commuter’s Lament, or a Close Shave,” eight panels of porcelain enamel on ceiling beam spelling out an 18-word ode to futility and resignation, hanging oppressively above the seemingly endless corridor between the Eighth Avenue and Seventh Avenue subway lines at Times Square.

Since 1991, the poem, by Norman B. Colp, has helped emphasize, for those fortunate enough to forget it for a moment, the brutal pointlessness of the daily commute:

“Overslept / So tired / If late / Get fired / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again.” (It ends with an inviting photo of a rumpled bed.)

On Saturday, a pair of fresh-faced young optimists, Josh Botwinick and Margot Reinstein, both 20, papered over the poem — in the name, according to Mr. Botwinick’s Facebook page, of Tikkun Olam, the pillar of duty in Judaism that translates to “repairing the world.”

“Why the pain” became “Much to gain.” “So tired” became “energized.”

The transportation authority did not find the act of chipper vandalism amusing, nor did it waste any time correcting it once The Daily News brought it to the agency’s attention on Tuesday. “What a disrespectful thing to do to the artist,” said the director of MTA Arts for Transit, Sandra Bloodworth. (Mr. Colp died in 2007.)

By Wednesday morning, the original poem was back on display — worn facings, graffiti stickers and all — and all was right and grim beneath Times Square once again.