The poem moves through a series of odd, fragmentary scenes, and the logic between them is more felt than explained. The speaker begins with refusals: disliking "the horse desire," they walk out; disliking death, they eat a piece of pie. Both are small, almost comic responses to big things, as if appetite and escape were the only answers available. Then the poem swerves to a stranger, someone living in an outhouse to avoid being seen, who sticks his head into a grave. It's hard to say exactly who he is, but he seems to embody hiding and a strange curiosity about death.
The ending shifts the mood. After all the avoidance, people simply gather: "we drink and talk / and read verses in the street." The tone turns warmer and more public. Judging by the title, the poem suggests that ordinary company, drink and poetry in the open, is a way of facing what we'd rather dodge.