The poem moves through three short scenes, and each one is set in darkness. First, we see two women carrying a coffin down a night street. There is no crowd and no explanation, just the weight of grief and the quiet effort of carrying it together. Then the speaker turns inward: "in my dark thought / no god is present." It is a bare, unsettling admission of doubt or emptiness, and the poem doesn't soften it.
The last stanza shifts. "O touch and see" sounds like an invitation, almost a cry of wonder, and the darkness becomes a place for "a music without rules." The speaker seems to find something alive there, free and unplanned, where sight gives way to touch and sound.
The title echoes a familiar line about greeting darkness as an old friend, and the poem seems to take that tone. The mood begins somber and lonely, but it ends open and strangely hopeful, as though loss and uncertainty leave room for something new.