The title, "In absentia," means "in absence," and that idea runs through the whole poem. It seems to describe a woman who has effectively died before she actually dies, perhaps through illness or fading memory, though the poem never says which. Her hands are "as spare as any in a compass," thin and angular, like the two legs of a drawing tool that measures but no longer holds anything.
Then comes her burial, which is "dark" and strangely empty: the speaker finds "nobody." That could mean no mourners, or that the woman herself is no longer there to be buried. The last image, "paper looking for paper / a door open to a door," feels like two blank, fragile things searching for each other and never quite connecting.
The speaker doesn't announce their grief. Instead the feeling comes through the bare images, which suggest loneliness and a sense of loss that arrived too early. The mood is quiet, hollow, and unsettling.