When the speaker walks along a city pavement, he is carrying a deep grief — someone he loved is gone, leaving what he calls a gap in the great constellation, the place where a star used to be. Even if the pole-star were blown out and the whole sky thrown into confusion, the movement of people around him restores a kind of order. The crowd becomes its own night sky: individual passersby are like the Pleiades, and the long street stretches out like the Milky Way. Their flickering lives pull him out of his private sorrow, so that for a little while he forgets his bereavement. The mood is bittersweet and strangely comforting — not because the loss disappears, but because the world’s ordinary motion briefly absorbs it.
Submergence — Summary
When along the pavement, Palpitating flames of life, People flicker round me, I forget my bereavement, The gap in the great constellation, The place where a star used to be.
Nay, though the pole-star Is blown out like a candle, And all the heavens are wandering in disarray, Yet when pleiads of people are Deployed around me, and I see The street's long outstretched Milky Way,
When people flicker down the pavement, I forget my bereavement.