Gloom is a short, bare poem about feeling unseen and emotionally stuck. The speaker begins by dismissing the point of being "cold" and complaining, as if both numbness and lament have stopped helping. What unsettles them more is silence, especially the pauses "between the acts," a phrase that suggests the empty moments when the performance of daily life stops and nothing covers the loneliness.
In the second stanza, the speaker asks who cares how much they care and love. It reads as a quiet hurt: their feeling goes unanswered. The image of "wrinkles / in the lone pool" suggests a solitary reflection, perhaps of aging or worry, rippling on still water. The final lines say dreams "shroud the gloom," covering it the way cloth covers something, yet leaving it "unburnt in sun," never dried out or cleared away. The mood is subdued, weary and inward. Comfort exists only as a thin cover over sadness that stays.