Dark Cloud on the Moon's Cassia

A home is failing to thrive and is occupied with keeping trouble away. Cloud then moves across the moon, where a cassia tree was imagined to grow. The last image is a woman with a single stick of incense. The second line's verb is odd, and we take its plainest sense of guarding against harm.

Set above these images in the book is the printed grade Kyo, Bad fortune. Each image is of something fine under pressure, and the verse ends without saying how that pressure resolves.

For a reader now, the picture is of a household or small group spending its strength on staying level. What would it look like to name that strain aloud?