The poem is built like a tiny scene overheard. A customer in a barber's chair, in the evening, passes on a piece of news: six men have drowned while repairing the queen's pleasure boat. The words "I hear" matter, because the speaker doesn't claim to know this firsthand. It's rumor, the kind of thing said casually between snips of the scissors, and the title, "Hearsay," points straight at that.
What stands out is the gap between the scale of the news and the setting. Six deaths are mentioned in the same breath as an ordinary errand. The boat is a luxury, a "pleasure" craft, and the men died keeping it fit for someone else's enjoyment. The poem doesn't comment on this, but the irony is hard to miss.
The mood is quiet and detached, with a faint chill underneath. The speaker seems to feel little openly, which may be the point: how easily distant tragedy becomes small talk.