A Blade of Grass by Brian Patten

You ask for a poem.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You say it is not good enough.
You ask for a poem.

I say this blade of grass will do.
It has dressed itself in frost,
It is more immediate
Than any image of my making.

You say it is not a poem.
It is a blade of grass and grass
Is not quite good enough.
I offer you a blade of grass.

You are indignant.
You say it is too easy to offer grass.
It is absurd.
Anyone can offer a blade of grass.

You ask for a poem.
And so I write you a tragedy about
How a blade of grass
Becomes more and more difficult to offer.

And about how as you grow older
A blade of grass
Becomes more difficult to accept.


A flip through my sec 4 lit text Poems Deep and Dangerous was rather refreshing. I found the above piece quite meaningful.

For every action, there is a motive and an impact. In the real world however, we see only the action. Even when someone tells u his motive in doing something, u will not see his motive in telling u so explicitly. Therefore, more often than not, we assume the motive of an action and from there deduce the impact. The problem with this approach is that the conclusions we reach at times are rather contary to the actual situation because of inaccuracies in our assumptions. And because of this, we respond with an action that is inappropiate to the situation and a vicious cycle starts.

In RJ, to look at every action as delibrate and stemming from self-interest is quite scary, because sometimes the obvious implications would make u go, "wtf is wrong with this world?" However, to be oblivious to this fact would open yourself to persuasive manipulation and even exploitation(in the soft sense though). As the two sides, the practical and the idealist, negotiate a delicate balance in our everyday lives, those at the extreme ends survive through pure disregard and disbelief of those at the other end. However, for most of us who are caught in the middle, we are indecisive whenever a situation warrants a judgement call as we cannot make up our mind on what is the assumed motive. In other words, you dun know if u can trust a person not to act in self-interest when he/she is somehow related to you (though the grounds and definition of relation are questionable, I shall not go into that) This situation arises as u urself do not knoe if u would be willing to give up self-interest for a relation. Come to think of it, trust could be an unwavering loyalty bond or just oppurtunity cost measured in terms of self-interest. And so when the gain in self-interest is more than the gain in strengthening the relation, it is rationale to break the trust. If the world would one day be alligned to that thinking, it would be a very sad place....