Dave Bonta's short poem begins with a cold, hard image: the "dead hands of conquest" become a field given over to ice. Conquest, which sounds like power and motion, ends up lifeless and frozen. The title, "Death grip," fits that picture, since a dead hand that still holds on is both eerie and a little pointless.
After that, the poem turns from the large scale to the personal. The speaker says that how they fall is their own fault, even "under every commander." That reads as a refusal to blame authority completely, though it may also hint at how easily people end up under someone's command. The last two stanzas are quieter and more hopeful. The speaker trusts "the power in a common rhyme" and takes occasion "to know the world."
The mood is stark but steady. There is a chill in the opening, then a calm sense of owning one's choices. Small things like rhyme, attention and curiosity seem to matter more here than conquest ever did.