The speaker seems caught in a restless, anxious loop, turning over and over, like a clock's hands or a body unable to sleep. The poem opens with a collective "we" going crazy waiting for something it never names. That blank is part of the unease: we can only guess whether it is relief, judgment, or catastrophe.
Nature is called "sick," and the people are her "bastards," unsure what to believe in and with "little reason to hope." Yet the speaker still hears a faint call to repent, delivered oddly by gravity, as if the pull of the earth were a kind of conscience. Later, war appears as something that "writes itself," and the "Mayday" suggests both spring and a distress call. The final image of a mind driving hard over stones, while the speaker turns all night, leaves a mood of guilt, dread, and exhaustion. The poem gives no clear answer, and that unresolved feeling is its point.