The poem is built from two short, quiet moments set side by side. In the first, the speaker sees "the art of sorrow" in a woman's garden. The phrase suggests that grief can be shaped and tended like plants, and that the garden's care and arrangement reveal something sad about the person who made it. We aren't told who she is or what she mourns, and the poem leaves that open.
Then the scene shifts to something plain and physical: someone cutting the speaker's hair close because the weather is hot. The practical reason sounds almost offhand, yet the image echoes the title, where a mower works against gardens. Cutting and trimming link the haircut to the tended garden, and the poem seems to set careful sorrow beside a blunt, sensible act.
The mood is calm, restrained, and a little wistful. The speaker doesn't explain or complain, and the feeling sits in the gap between the two images.