The speaker is a veteran who, startlingly, misses war. Not the violence itself so much as the way it gave life a sharp, simple shape. In war, night is dangerous and alert, and even the body seems to take sides: the right eye might "act against" him, as if his own senses could betray him. That small image suggests a mind always on edge, never fully trusted by its owner.
The last stanza turns toward peacetime, where "every city and county / is an atelier," an artist's studio. The comparison is unsettling. It suggests that ordinary places are workshops for something, perhaps the aftermath of what the speaker did, or the shaping of memory. The final lines, "for what / I did not inquire," hint at guilt or avoided questions: he never asked what his actions led to.
The mood is cold, uneasy, and quietly haunted. The poem doesn't explain itself, and that gap feels like the speaker's own silence.