Dave Bonta's "Proverbial (10)" reads like a handful of sayings pulled from some imagined book of folk wisdom, though each one bends the usual rules. Nothing here is spelled out, so the meaning comes from sitting with each line.
The first, "All self-things change," feels calm and plain: whatever we think of as a fixed self is always shifting. The second line sounds darker. To look and be looked at, it suggests, is to be captured, as if attention carries a kind of power or loss of freedom. Then the land "would not answer the world," which may point to nature's stubborn independence, a refusal to give back what we call out to it. The last line is the strangest. Judging by the wording, it seems to warn against expecting thanks, or reward, for effort that was never going to pay off.
The mood is cool, wary and quietly stern. The speaker sounds less like someone confiding feelings and more like someone handing down hard-won, slightly mysterious advice.