The poem begins with a strange question: what harm could come from joy? The speaker answers almost at once, with a shrug that is also a confession. God knows, but we are hardly built for happiness. We don't know how to hold it.
Then the scene shifts to a garden at dusk. Night arrives "as it ought to," calm and unbothered, and "raw as all life." The image feels both beautiful and a little frightening, a reminder that the world carries on in its own elemental way. In the last stanza, people are busy talking and laughing about a neighbor's folly, wrapped up in their own cleverness. The title, "Oblivious," lands here. While something vast and unguarded happens around them, they chatter and miss it.
The mood is quiet, wry, and gently rueful. The speaker doesn't scold; he seems to include himself in that "we." The poem leaves us with a mild sadness about how easily we talk our way past wonder.