The speaker describes a series of dreams, each one slipping further from ordinary life. It begins with the most human moment: meeting a loved one, only to find she is dead. Nothing is explained, and the flatness of the statement makes it hit harder. Then the dreams turn strange. A stone swells and becomes a gray bird, something heavy and still changing into something that can fly and leave.
The last images move to the Ganges, a river that many readers will link with ritual and mourning, though the poem doesn't say so outright. The speaker goes down the stairs toward it and becomes religious, wailing "like a lost wind." The title, "Dream conversion," suggests this change: grief seems to push the speaker into faith, or at least into raw, wordless lament.
The mood is quiet, eerie, and sorrowful. The short lines and repeated "I dream" feel calm on the surface, but the ending lets the emotion break through.