Faint Praise

Objective standards notwithstanding --
and are there any other kind --
no standard can exist depending
on the perceiver's state of mind,
since if it is, it's not a standard,
but an opinion that's rendered
from the perspective of its host.
It may be popular, at most,
but isn't truly universal,
the way a meter or a gram
produce a measure worth a damn,
and never subject to reversal.
Those limitations understood,
I thought this thing was pretty good.