The poet tries to sleep but cannot. There seems to be a conflict between the man and his muse: the man must get some sleep but the poet inside him cannot put his thoughts to rest, agonising over a vaguely formed idea that he is unable to articulate. He feels that, rather than struggle with himself over sleep, he should go outdoors. Nature and the outside world seem to be the source the poet relies on to stimulate the creative thoughts in his mind. Interestingly, the poet leans “from” his porch, “across” the privets and “into the washed-out creation”. His leaning is a sign of his intellectual fatigue. He seems to be stretching out to the open sky, escaping the physical parameters that hedge him in and extending himself far beyond the reach of his individual world. However, the world outside too is “washed-out”, faded and undefined like his thoughts. The “creation” could also be a reflection of Curnow’s own mind at the time. Lost in confusion, it is blank and utterly devoid of any creative sparks which he can pen down on paper.
“Dark place” is an obvious allusion to the poet’s mind. Poetic thought has not yet illuminated the area; it strives to develop in the dark. There are two “bright clouds” present in this otherwise empty abyss. “Bright clouds” is a contradiction as, while the first part of the phrase indicates a shining light enabling one to focus on something, the latter half makes us think of something obscuring the point of interest. It thus re-establishes the poet’s inability to think coherent thoughts. What is more, “clouds” makes us think of something hazy and vague. Thus we assume these “bright clouds” to be faint indications of the poetic inspiration that the poet is attempting to formulate. The word “dusted” helps to illustrate the difficulty of the poetic process by means of its ambiguity. It could be taken to mean cleaned, as though the “moon”, the spirit of his poetic muse, is throwing light on his half-formed thought; alternatively it could refer to the lack of focus and obscurity of his thoughts, just like an object coated with a layer of dust. As a final touch, the word “query” is inserted in parentheses in the middle of the line. It reinforces the sense of confusion in the poet’s mind by momentarily throwing the reader off track.
Curnow tells the readers that, of the two predominant thoughts in his mind, “one’s mine [and] the other’s an adversary”. We are now aware of the two prominent and conflicting trains of thought. One “bright cloud” would be the idea to which the poet is attempting to lend some structure. Its “adversary” would be the desire of the poet’s alter ego, an ordinary man, to just drift off to sleep. The poet’s opponent could also be his writer’s block, rendering him incapable of piecing his thoughts together. The poet does not seem overly concerned by his lack of poetic inspiration, though. Indeed, his attitude is unworried and nonchalant as he casually implies that the creative process is beyond his control, depending on “the wind, or something”.
The first line of the next stanza, “A long moment… not on time.” reinforces the idea that the poetic process is uncontrollable cannot be manipulated. It can fall anywhere on a continuum, from a complete lack of stimulus to a sudden outpouring of ideas. The poet experiences a “chill” rising “in the throat”, and the readers wonder if he is going to be sick. He then talks of the sky emptying “the whole of its contents down”. The poet’s sudden queasiness thus becomes a metaphor for the upsurge of ideas, welling up inside him until he regurgitates it all out on paper. The burden of restlessness that he carried due to his frustrating inarticulate condition has lifted.
The poem’s resolution is told from the point of view of the ordinary, sleep-deprived man. Now that his muse has got the business of creative inspiration out of the way, he desires nothing more than to go “back to bed” and sleep. The poet in him shrinks and fades away as his mind shuts all connection with the outside world and drifts off to sleep. However, the muse is described as a “cringing demiurge”, which makes us imagine the poet expressing disgust at his alter ego’s lack of appreciation for the poetic process. He “stealthily” creeps away from the scene with his “tools” in hand. The poetic process has not stopped; it will continue to develop new ideas, but now it will not do so at the expense of the man’s sleep. It seems to be a comment by Curnow on how the creative process in a poet’s mind never really stops, not even in sleep. Throughout the poem ‘Continuum’, he uses enjambment to depict the continuity of the poetic process and a poet’s struggles with its highs and lows.