here's a William Blake poem for you

 The Clod and The Pebble

"Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

So sung a little Clod of Clay

Trodden with the cattle's feet,

But a Pebble of the brook

Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only self to please,

To bind another to its delight,

Joys in another's loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

holy BUCKETS! what a poem! what a difference in perspective!

In the first stanza the speaker is the Clod of clay who is malleable and all day cows step on his little Clod face. But guess what?! The Clod believes that love is the power to give ease to another. Love is selflessness and wanting to make life better for someone else. Isn't that nice?

Then in the last stanza we hear from the Pebble of the brook. Probably has a pretty good life. Being a Pebble. Living in a brook and all. Way better than being cow stomped 24 and 7. But the Pebble he says that love is selfish. 

Is it like the inverse of the Clod? Like the Clod experiences what it's like to give love to someone but the Pebble describes what it's like to receive that love? I don't know.

I guess you could say the poem is talking about how some people view love as selfless and some people view love as a selfish act but that feels like it doesn't give Blake enough credit. There's gotta be something else at work.

I don't understand the Pebble. The first line makes sense. Love is to make the lover happy. Oh I love how much this person is in love with me. 

"Joys in another's loss of ease,"

I guess it's like, 'oh look how desperate this person is for me. they're so miserable because they're obsessed with me."

Does that give anyone joy? That seems extremely sadistic. I guess that's the point. The Pebble doesn't have a very interesting perspective to me. And I guess the Clod is pretty boring too. 

I think most people would argue that they like to make others feel happy because that also makes them happy. It's nice in a "selfish" way to know that you gave someone joy. And I would argue that most people who act in ways that would be considered selfish in a relationship are usually more interested in the idea of someone loving them and because of that they don't really care about the other person which can be harmful but in most cases it probably doesn't extend to taking pleasure from seeing someone hurt.

The more I think about it the more I think the Clod and the Pebble are perfect for each other.

The Clod wants to be miserable. It doesn't want any joy and somehow it thinks that's going to make someone else feel love. If someone was truly torturing themselves for you, you would probably feel pretty uneasy. Only someone messed up like the Pebble would find joy in that. 

This poem is about how when you try to give love to inanimate objects like Clods and Pebbles they mess it up and aren't any good at it. They lack basic social and emotional reasoning skills. The Clod loves that cows step on it and that it's worthless as if that lack of any respect somehow proves the purity of its love. Meanwhile the Pebble is a classic bully who thinks that putting others down automatically raises itself up.

I take back what I said about William Blake and giving him credit. He's wasted our time by imagining two idiots sharing perspectives that almost no one would want to hold. 

I've got a poem called Book and Sourdough

Food only exists to create hunger

never eat food

you should starve yourself

that's what makes food taste good

said the Book

who was an old dusty book

but then a loaf of Sourdough

also had something to say

eat as much as you can all the time

the purpose of food is to make yourself explode

never stop eating food

gorge and engorge yourself forever and ever

Just as good. Just as good as William Blake.