Review — Summary

Dave BontaContemplative

if I should die I shall use it as an ordinary window

seeing the boys playing in our back yard

on a pleasant evening at the beginning of a quarrel

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The poem is built around a strange, quiet thought: the speaker imagines dying and then using "it" as an ordinary window. The title, "Review," hints that this is a looking back, and "it" is never named. It could be the speaker's own gaze, a memory, or the act of remembering itself. The poem doesn't say, and that openness is part of its pull.

What the window shows is plain and warm: boys playing in the back yard on a pleasant evening. But the last line turns it. This is also "the beginning of a quarrel," so the calm scene already holds something that will break it. The word "our" suggests a shared home, and perhaps a shared life that is about to be strained.

The mood is tender but uneasy. The speaker seems to be looking at an everyday moment with great attention, as if it matters more because it is ordinary, and because it is slipping away.

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