Standing in a graveyard, the speaker sees how little the old rituals of remembrance have held up. The stone guardians placed over the graves have fallen face-down, their lips worn thin by the exhaust of engines. Rather than mourn this, the speaker imagines the statues finding relief in the earth, where tiny worms or creeping ivy might bring them back to a kind of life.
The second stanza turns to the dead themselves, a crowd that grows more anonymous with each year. The tone is quiet and curious rather than grief-stricken. The speaker wonders whether the dead can reach the winter trees through slow dissolution, the way stalactites form drop by drop. Out of the darkness they shape something new: a mask, a vessel, a full breast. These images suggest that decay is not only an ending but also a return to the earth, something that holds and feeds. The mood is calm, strange, and oddly comforting.