The poem starts with a plain fact: snakes can't close their eyes, because their eyelids are fused. The speaker follows that thought to its end. Even after the body rots, the eyes would stay open, glinting like "forlorn stars." The tone is quiet and observant, with a hint of sadness in that word "forlorn."
Then the poem turns to us. When someone dies, we hurry to pull down their eyelids, frightened by the "vacant look of death." The speaker seems to see this as a human reflex, a way of not having to look at emptiness. But the closing lines wonder what might happen if we didn't. Perhaps the dead eyes would "light up stars / in somebody else's eyes," which suggests that an open gaze could stir feeling, or even wonder, in the living. The mood is thoughtful and gently unsettling. It treats death as something to look at rather than hide from, and the ending leaves that idea open, trailing off in ellipsis.