Rounds's poem is about how the beliefs and rituals we get from our parents come back to us, often in strange, sneaky ways. The "coyly perverse hogs" use reverse psychology to dig up "the ideals / Of your mother and father" and hand them back as staged photographs of "important ritual." These are traditions you're expected to act out again at regular meetings "of the mind," which sounds both official and a little absurd. The mood is playful and slightly mocking, with odd phrases like "tri-quarterly" and "soggy echoes of mod revival" making the past feel stale and damp.
The ending shifts the tone. Dad's sunglasses are used for "(a)voiding / Blindness / From an old sun." The parenthesis in the title and here suggests both avoiding and voiding, protecting yourself and emptying something out. The speaker seems unsure whether the inherited past is a shield or a glare. Judging by the imagery, the feeling is ambivalent: amused, wary, and a bit tender.