The speaker sits in a chair, hoping the right words will arrive, and admits that this hope is a little foolish. Faith of any kind feels costly now, and the poem is blunt about it: there doesn't seem to be a god who cares. Around that doubt, the season presses in. It's August, the birds have stopped singing, and a lone robin hops across a lawn while the worms hide from the dry ground. Everyone is worn out by heat, drought and plague, all waiting for relief.
Then the poem turns to a grandfather the speaker barely remembers, starting with a trunk that may or may not have been his. His life was small, yet he made room for joy: magic tricks, walks, old friends, and keeping clocks ticking. The mood is tired and bleak at first, but it softens. The poem seems to find a quiet answer to despair in his modest example, and in the speaker's own stubborn habit of sitting and waiting for words.