The title, "Apophasis," points to a way of speaking by saying what something is not, and the poem works much that way. It begins by rejecting belief: no creed pleased the speaker as much as music did. Faith in doctrine falls short, while sound offers something more satisfying. Then the tone darkens. The speaker calls their own road "a wound," which suggests a life marked by pain or loss, though the poem never says what caused it.
The third stanza widens the view. Mortality touches everything the speaker sees, with one exception: the night. Night seems to stand outside time and decay, perhaps as a kind of mystery or endlessness. The final lines turn this into a stance. "Not knowing is an art," but a "black" one, a word that hints at both secrecy and darkness.
The mood is quiet, sombre, and a little defiant. The speaker doesn't claim answers. They accept uncertainty, finding some beauty in it while admitting it is uneasy and shadowed.