The speaker begins in strange isolation. He is alone "as the clock / or an orange in translation," comparisons that don't quite add up but still feel right: a clock ticking by itself, a piece of fruit that loses something when it crosses into another language. Then the mood turns oddly tender. He is "mean as a little sun" and "blue at the difficulty of love," mixing heat and sadness in a single breath.
The poem's centre is a playful, serious question: does he take the world as his wife, "today in her flower suit"? Loving the world becomes like a marriage vow. The title, which echoes the famous line about having world enough and time, hints at the pressure of the clock behind it all. In the closing lines, love is "well-oiled uncertainty," a body moving in ways it can't fully explain, and those motions call up "a sea of my own." The ending opens outward, so loneliness gives way to something vast, private, and alive. The mood is wry, dreamy, and quietly hopeful.