The speaker is remembering someone who has died, apparently a man the poem pictures as old. What comes back first is not the death but the last illness: he is "ill still / in that delirium." Even in that state, the man kept talking, and the speaker hears his words as delicate, "like fine lace." He spoke about Peak Oil and empire, big subjects, and the poem suggests his mind could still make "all imaginable" feel within reach.
The tone is quiet and tender. Death arrives gently, "by appointment," as if it were a visitor who had been expected. The ending carries the poem's main feeling. Facing it, the man says he "was not his weaknesses." The speaker seems to hold onto that line as proof of dignity. Illness and age did not define him. The mood is grief, but it is mixed with admiration and a sense of calm.