"September 1, 1939" opens by establishing its setting. The poem's title alludes to a major event: the Nazi German invasion of Poland, which is now remembered as a tipping point in the outbreak of World War II. The first two lines, however, indicate that the poem's physical location is many miles away from the invasion. It is set instead in a "dive" bar "on Fifty-second Street" in New York City (where the poet was living at the time).
These opening lines also introduce the poem's speaker, a first-person voice who describes not just his location at the bar, but also his emotions as he sits there: "Uncertain and afraid." Following this forthright admission, lines 4 and 5 clarify the cause of the speaker's uncertainty, and also shed light on the poem's central concern: the rise of authoritarianism.
As the speaker sees it, the "low dishonest decade" of the 1930s, which bore witness to the rise of fascism across Europe, is about to "expire" (or end), and along with it, any "clever" but naive "hopes" that the speaker (and others) may have had for a better, less frightening time.
In keeping with the poem's dark themes, the language of these opening lines also helps create a foreboding atmosphere right from the start. A strong current of sibilance runs ominously through these early lines, in words like "sit," "second," "street," "uncertain," and "dishonest," while the alliterative /d/ sounds in "dishonest decade" create a steady drumbeat of fear. Lines 3 and 5 rhyme as well (despite the poem's overall lack of a consistent rhyme scheme) thus further linking the emotions of the speaker and the terrible times he is living in through the matching sounds of "afraid" and "decade."