Paraphrase — Summary

Robinson sets two human impulses side by side: we clutch at life and we fantasize about death, yet neither one is the real thing. The speaker’s tone is terse and almost riddling, but not cruel—more like someone stating a hard spiritual truth. To “live” fully, the poem suggests, you have to get rid of “the ghost of human breath”—that anxious, ego-driven self that is merely afraid of dying. And you don’t truly die just by dreaming of it; death becomes real only when you finally leave the road that keeps running toward it. The mood is quiet, inward, and a little unsettling. It feels like a compressed meditation on mortality: stop both clinging and dreaming, and something more honest—life or death—can actually arrive.