The poem seems to catch a moment of shock. The first lines show a body, "her stark anatomy," lying in a garden. A garden usually suggests calm and growth, so the word "stark" lands hard: she is seen plainly, without any softening. The title, "The Fall," may point to a literal fall, though it also brings to mind the garden of the Eden story. That second reading is an inference, but the setting invites it.
In the middle, the speaker looks at the ground instead. The image of "a city ordered to be kept shut" suggests a mind closing its gates against what it has just seen. It feels like a refusal to take it in. Then the final lines, "the body's a thing / of bad colors," go cold and blunt, as if grief or horror has flattened the language. The mood is stunned and uneasy, and the poem's short, bare lines leave the reader in that same silence.