The speaker begins with a quiet "if": if dying means leaving behind the ugliness of the world, then so be it. But the thought isn't bleak in a simple way. Right away the poem fills with the things that would be lost or given up: spring, summer, the slow-moving serpent with its agate eyes, blue bushes in flower, the smell of spice. Even the "lament / of tree leaves on the cement" suggests that the world's beauty and its sadness are tangled together.
Then the speaker offers a second possibility: if death can't be a clean escape, let it come softly, with one lone bird singing at twilight. The final image is tender, almost like being tucked in. A hand crooks, crawls over, and covers "us" with leaves. The mood is weary but gentle, caught between disgust with the world and a deep attachment to its small, sensory details. Death here feels less like terror and more like a hoped-for rest.