The title promises a recipe, and the poem delivers one, but the ingredients are strange: sit, howl, endure, prophesy. Nothing here is practical advice. Instead, survival looks like stubborn waiting and loud, unashamed grief.
The instructions come as short commands, which makes the speaker sound firm, almost like someone talking to themselves to keep going. "Sit till Christ comes" suggests patience that could last forever, since the end point may never arrive. "Howl till the moon is new" turns pain into something animal and raw, and it gives the howling a rhythm tied to the moon's cycle. Then comes the bleakest line, about weathering "another lost hope and rage," where the word "another" hints that disappointment has happened many times before.
The last image, prophesying destruction to the nation, makes the speaker sound like an Old Testament prophet shouting at a country that won't listen. The mood is angry, weary and defiant. Survival here means refusing to go quiet.