Three short lines, and a lot packed into them. The poem opens with "the Dow down," the kind of phrase you'd hear in a news bulletin about the stock market falling. Then the view shifts to a river glowing red with light, probably at sunset, though the poem never says so outright. The red could also hint at warning, loss, or even blood, and it quietly echoes the "red" of a bad day on the financial charts.
The title, "Propitiation," means an act meant to appease a god or higher power. That gives the final line, "a late rite," its weight. The sunset starts to look like a ceremony, something offered up, perhaps to make up for human greed or just to mark the day's end. The word "late" works two ways: it's evening, and the ritual is also coming too late to fix anything.
The speaker doesn't state a feeling directly. The mood is hushed and watchful, with a dry irony in setting the market's noise against the river's calm, solemn glow.