Self-Reflection — Summary

Dave BontaContemplative

Me: my extreme business. I see my father, that wit, the war with chance. My lord Me, we turn.

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The speaker turns attention on the self and finds it a strange, almost comic job. "Me: my extreme business" treats the self as a kind of enterprise, something demanding and all-consuming, maybe a little absurd. Then the view shifts. Looking inward, the speaker sees a father, described as a "wit," and "the war with chance." The poem doesn't explain these phrases, but they suggest an inheritance: a sharp, joking intelligence and a struggle against luck and uncertainty that seems to pass from one generation to the next.

The last line is the oddest and most interesting. "My lord Me" mixes mock-grandeur with something close to self-mockery, as if the speaker is bowing to their own ego. "We turn" could mean the self and the inherited father-figure move together, or that the speaker and this inner "lord" are caught in a restless circling. The mood is wry, compressed, and a bit unsettled: playful on the surface, with a quieter sense that looking at yourself means meeting the people who made you.

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