The speaker attends the funeral of someone they loved and tries to smile, hoping to keep grief from taking over. The poem treats grief as a kind of weed, something that chokes. Around the speaker, the world looks alive: trees in leaf, a clear sky, bright sunlight. That beauty sits oddly beside the mourning.
The brackets show the speaker's effort to cope. They tell the dead person's daughter that her parent has "become one with nature," then worry, "I hope I wasn't wrong." The repeated vodkas, "(& another)," suggest they are numbing themselves. Outside, the speaker imagines the dead person dancing and singing, with roses growing in place of the weeds. This brings only brief relief.
The ending is blunt. Nothing answers the speaker's longing except "the brutal eloquence / of silence." The mood is tender and sad, and the comforting images fall away in the end.