The slash in the title does the first piece of work. "Recreation" is what we do on days off: games, hobbies, shopping, a pleasant meal. Split the word and it becomes "re-creation," a remaking of the self, even a second creation of the world. Bonta's six lines sit in the gap between those meanings. The poem asks whether our free time still restores us, or whether it has become one more task that we perform and pay for.
Its answer begins in the first line, "I work at leisure," a tight little contradiction. Leisure is meant to be the opposite of work, yet the speaker approaches it with effort and a sense of duty. The dash then opens onto the odd phrase "a holy war." A war is something fought with grim determination, and calling it holy adds a note of fanaticism. The speaker seems to pursue enjoyment with the zeal of a crusader, and the "w" sounds of "work" and "war" tie the two ideas together. That earnest drive is what drains the pleasure from the pastime.
The next lines turn to money. "I have bought all my own / pleasures" sounds at first like independence: I am self-sufficient, I answer to no one. But "bought" changes the claim. If every pleasure has been purchased, none has been given, discovered, or shared. The line break after "own" adds a quiet irony, because the speaker owns the pleasures only in the way a customer owns a receipt. "And so," at the start of the following line, sounds like a logical conclusion, a neat "therefore." What it leads to is a bleak result, "proceed in a supper of ash."
That phrase carries most of the poem's imagery. "Proceed" suggests a procession or a ceremony, something solemn and ordered. A supper should be warm and communal, and judging by the religious vocabulary already in play ("holy"), it may also faintly recall a ritual meal. But the food is ash, what remains once everything has burned. Ash can suggest funerals, penitence, or simple uselessness. Whichever meaning we choose, the meal does not nourish. The speaker's busy, purchased pleasure has used itself up and left only residue. The poem never explains these associations, and it doesn't need to. The words are placed so that their echoes do the arguing.
The last line makes the sharpest move: "ourselves a dish." The poem has said "I" and "my own" until now, and "ourselves" suddenly widens the circle, so the speaker's habit becomes a shared one. The grammar is also loose. There is no verb, and the phrase hangs on like an afterthought. We could read it as "we are the dish" being served, or as "we make ourselves into a dish." Either way, the diners have become the dinner. People who treat leisure as a product to consume end up consumed by it. "Dish" also carries other everyday senses, such as a serving vessel or a bit of gossip, which add a sour edge to the ending. Its sound matters too. "Ash" and "dish" share a short vowel and a hushing "sh," so the poem closes on a near-rhyme, the only one it has. After five lines of unrhymed free verse, that small chime makes the ending feel final.
The rhythm supports this. The lines are short, from four to seven syllables, with no regular meter. Lines run over into each other ("my own / pleasures," "and so / proceed"), which gives the sentence a forward push that mimics the breathless busyness it describes. The period after "dish" brings that motion to a sudden stop.
What makes the poem worth reading is its compression. In about twenty words, it takes on a familiar modern problem: free time that has been scheduled, optimised and bought until it feels like work. It does so without a lecture. It relies on a pun in the title, a handful of loaded words ("holy," "supper," "ash"), and one pronoun that quietly widens from "I" to "ourselves." A reader finishes it with an uncomfortable question: when did we last rest without trying so hard?