A man watches the evening news, takes in reports of death and torture, and does what many of us wish we could do: he leaves. The poem's epigraph, a line from the Psalms about lifting one's eyes to the hills, sets up the move. He drives toward the mountains looking for some kind of help or relief.
The strangest phrase is "the prison of what is certain." Certainty is usually comforting, but here it feels like a trap. The news offers grim facts that seem final, and the speaker wants out of that closed-in feeling. The mountains don't offer answers. They make "so low a sound," a quiet, steady presence rather than a comforting voice.
The mood is subdued and searching. There's grief and unease, but also a little hope in the act of turning toward something vast and silent. The poem doesn't claim the mountains fix anything; it just lets the speaker listen.