The poem opens with a question that sounds like a person torn between loyalties: which garden is mine, and which should I give up? A garden suggests a place of belonging, but here it also seems to stand for a side, a group, a claim to be made. The speaker admits to carrying hate home, yet it brings no pleasure. All that comes with it is "the many factions, the ire," a crowded, angry mess of divided camps.
Then the tone quiets. "Between two houses, the common sun" points to something shared that sits above the quarrel, a light that doesn't care which side anyone is on. But the speaker doesn't find peace there. Instead they meet "my old lack: me." The ending is blunt and a little unsettling. The conflict outside seems to have distracted from an emptiness inside. The mood is weary, reflective, and honest, with a sharp turn from public division to private self-confrontation.