The scene from a window may excite a guilt, Snow and smoke together towards the street. In a warm room sometimes the cold is a quilt To ease whatever wrong and help repeat The wrong. Today, my novel put aside, Another man's adventure gives no calm, For I have hurt my brother, even tried His heart. His bleeding wound is in my palm.
A man looks out at a plain winter scene, snow and smoke drifting toward the street, and finds it stirs up guilt rather than peace. The speaker admits that being cozy indoors can be dangerous: the cold outside makes his room feel like a quilt, a comfort that eases his conscience and, worse, makes it easier to keep doing the wrong thing. Comfort becomes a kind of excuse.
He tries to escape by reading a novel, but someone else's adventure can't calm him. The poem then turns bluntly personal. He has hurt his brother, even "tried / His heart," and the last line makes the injury almost physical: the bleeding wound is "in my palm." He holds the blame in his own hand.
The mood is quiet, uneasy, and self-accusing. Nothing dramatic happens, and that is the point. Guilt arrives in an ordinary moment, when there is nothing left to distract him.