The speaker is asking whether any other life could match the one they have lost, which they picture as a fire. The opening question sounds less like curiosity than grief: nothing else seems to burn as brightly. The title, "Vicarious atonement," hints at someone standing in for another, paying a debt or carrying a burden on their behalf. The poem never says who or what, so the loss stays open.
The middle lines, "a sea for my sea / a watch in my watch," read like wishes for replacement or doubling, as if the speaker wants something to fill the exact shape of what's gone. Then comes the plea: "give me a loss I can live on." The final image is striking. Living on a loss is like a man who understands only one word of a language. It's very little, but it's something to hold on to. The mood is spare, aching and quietly desperate, with a hunger for meaning even in absence.