The speaker rides a train south from Boston to New York and looks out at a landscape littered with industrial waste. What he sees troubles him, and he keeps asking the same helpless question: "An American, what can I do?" The view is bleak and a little eerie. Flat ponds lie still under the sky, with something furry sticking out of them that he jokingly calls "the rough beast." Smoke rises from stacks and seems to drift back down to them, as if nothing ever really leaves.
The mood is guilty, weary and darkly ironic. The speaker feels implicated, not just disgusted: "all this luggage" suggests a burden we all carry along. A single quiet boat on a lake offers a brief moment of calm, and he begs matter itself to "absorb our violence." Yet the poem ends with shopping centers lighting up the night, which suggests that the cycle of consumption carries on unchecked.