Change is not the butterfly’s wing,
Not the grace of fluttering spring.
It is the chrysalis, dark, confined,
A violent unraveling, flesh redesigned.
It whispers through cracks, silent and slow,
Infiltrates walls where no banners glow.
No trumpets, no riots, no fiery screams,
Just shadows eroding the edges of dreams.
For revolutions burn with a blinding light,
But their embers fade in the cold of night.
Heroes fall, their voices decay,
Ideals scatter like ash, blown away.
Yet water will creep where stone resists,
Freeze in the fractures, expand with a twist.
It breaks the façade without sounding alarms,
Silent as whispers, yet deadly in arms.
The status quo guards its gilded throne,
Fearing the seeds that are quietly sown.
Change knows this—so it moves in disguise,
A patient assault beneath watchful eyes.
Let others charge with their banners unfurled,
Change burrows deep in the heart of the world.
For only the subtle, the patient, the sly,
Will fracture the walls and let falsehoods die.
A response to:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4909023/change-is-inevitable/Counter-Argument: The Brutality of Change
Change is lionized as a graceful metamorphosis, but that ignores the violence of the process itself. The narrative of the butterfly glosses over the brutal disintegration inside the chrysalis. The caterpillar doesn’t simply sprout wings; it dissolves into primordial soup before reconstituting itself. If the cocoon were transparent, we’d recoil at the grotesque transformation, not celebrate it.
In human societies, meaningful change is no different. It is rarely welcomed. It disrupts power structures, shatters norms, and demands discomfort. The status quo exists because it protects entrenched interests—those who benefit from stability will fight tooth and nail to preserve it. Public, bombastic attempts at change—revolutions, protests, upheavals—are met with suppression, co-optation, or decay. History is littered with revolutions that burned bright but died with their leaders, the ideals buried under the rubble of resistance.
True, lasting change does not trumpet itself. It works quietly, subtly, infiltrating systems from within, eroding the foundations of the status quo without announcing its presence. Like water seeping into cracks and freezing, expanding slowly until the structure fractures, this kind of change avoids the spotlight to minimize resistance. It respects the reality that people fear disruption and will reject it whenever possible.
When change does erupt publicly, it is often romanticized in hindsight. The Civil Rights Movement, the French Revolution, the Arab Spring—these are remembered for their ideals, not the blood, betrayals, and setbacks that defined their execution. Even when change succeeds, it carries the scars of the struggle, and the ideals are often compromised before they solidify.
The truth is: change is ugly. It is rejected, dismissed, and fought against. Only through patience, subtle infiltration, and persistence does change sometimes outlive the people who champion it. The quiet subversion of norms is more enduring than the loud explosion of revolutions.