Risk assessment — Summary

Dave BontaContemplative

the rich fear too great a liberty hands singing in the fields

without calling God to make a new ground

without the price of order bound up in a book

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The title sounds like corporate jargon, and the poem uses that cold language to make a quiet point: the people with wealth and power treat freedom as a danger to be measured and managed. The first line says it plainly. The rich fear "too great a liberty," and the image that follows is of ordinary people, "hands singing in the fields," working and making music together.

The rest of the poem imagines what that freedom might look like: people building "a new ground" without appealing to God, and without the "price of order" that is "bound up in a book." The book could be scripture or law, though the poem leaves that open. The speaker seems to side with the singing workers, and there is a hopeful, almost gentle mood in the fieldwork and the fresh start. Underneath it is a sharp irony. What gets called a "risk" is really the chance that people might live without being told how.

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