Two memories open the poem: a soldier sprinting through gunfire toward a forest, and a woman in high heels and a black dress, shoveling dirt into a grave on a neatly mown lawn. Both images are vivid and physical. The soldier is fast and desperate, while the woman, with her wet, unseeing eyes, seems to be acting on autopilot. One scene is about surviving, the other about grief.
The title points to Kohelet, the Hebrew name for the biblical Ecclesiastes, and the speaker then recalls its idea that there is a season for everything. The lines about strength and weakness twist the old wisdom a little: there is even a time to hide each one. But when someone asks what time it is, the speaker admits he doesn't know. The mood is quiet and unsettled. The speaker has seen too much to trust a tidy saying, yet he doesn't reject it either. He just can't tell which season he is in.