Nothing here adds up in a neat way, and that seems to be the point. The poem moves through fragments that feel like a nightmare version of a police state: a password, a gendarme, "assault reductions," a place that might be a village or just a "clot." The title's invented-sounding country, Ruritania, adds to the sense of a made-up land where order is menacing and absurd at once.
The speaker sounds cold and darkly ironic. Bodies are treated as meat, even "young meat" told to sleep, and bone becomes "a parasitic form of trust" passed on to children, later ground into "mystery animal burger." The imagery suggests that people are consumed by systems they can't see, bound by "increasing indebtedness to the unseen." The zebra, which turns into the gendarme, hints at something wild being turned into authority.
The mood is unsettling, grim, and strangely funny. The last line, a jumble of words, feels like language breaking down.