Countee Cullen’s four-line epigram sets up a quiet punchline about death. On earth, the wise man makes the rules and the fool needs guidance. But “here”—meaning the grave or the afterlife—that distinction disappears. The wise are no better off than fools, and nobody has any advantage. The parenthetical final line, “And no man is the wiser,” is a dry pun: no one has more knowledge, and no one is more aware or better for it.
The speaker’s tone is wry and a little melancholy, not cruel. The mood is one of leveling calm: death makes earthly status, intelligence, and authority irrelevant. A fool might have been looked down on in life, but the poem suggests that in the end everyone is equally unknowing, equally reduced, and equally human.