These four lines read like proverbs that have been twisted slightly out of shape. They sound like old wisdom, but the sense keeps slipping away, and that seems to be the point. "Knock on a clock, owe an owl" bends "knock on wood" into something stranger, where time itself becomes a debt owed to a night creature. The owl then returns alongside a sage, meeting "where a light is out," which suggests wisdom belongs to darkness and not knowing.
The third line gives a house feelings, as if a building could be displeased by what hangs inside it, and the word "arms" hints at both weapons and limbs. The last line is the plainest and the darkest: we die in fear, not laughing. Judging by the imagery, the speaker isn't offering comfort. The mood is eerie and dreamlike, half joke and half warning, and it leaves you with the feeling of having heard something important in a language you almost understand.