The correct answer is Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night"
You can recognize that it is a villanelle because it consists of 19 lines separated into five tercets followed by a quatrain.
No context? about this passage
The two sentences in this excerpt that reflect the main character's uneasiness with his family history are:
1) The full contents of the chest never came quite clear, perhaps because he didn't want to know.
and
2) His mother had once tried to explain the paper to him, but he hadn't wanted to listen.
Both sentences show that the main character, as a child, is not interested in the chest and its contents, because to him the family heirloom represents death and decay, so his family history, which is locked in that chest, makes him uneasy. As the story progresses (and the character grows), his view of the chest changes and varies, until he understands its importance.
The narrator isn't part of the story but knows what one character is thinking and feeling.
