The speaker describes a society that prefers things vague. In "the temperate regions," people dodge strong feeling and plain speaking, and the speaker admits to walking "like a drunk" when the air gets too clear. Even love can only be mentioned with irony, and caution feels like the safest habit. Details like surveillance cameras, angels reduced to "paraplegic" watchers, and children playing hangman make the place feel both guarded and faintly morbid.
The mood is dry, wry, and quietly sad. The speaker sounds like part of this world ("we are used to"), yet also uneasy inside it. The final lines turn toward poets, who are resented because they carry "empty wash tubs instead of roses." They offer no pretty comfort, only a reminder that everyone is "in exile from our dreams." The title fits that idea: the speaker suggests we have drifted away from something truer, and we protect ourselves by pretending not to notice. The cemetery setting, as the subtitle gives it, adds a note of mortality.