The poem opens with a joke that isn't quite a joke: we fall out of hell and land in a committee meeting. The drop is small in distance but big in tone, as if the speaker sees the two places as uncomfortably close. Bureaucratic talk feels like its own kind of punishment, only duller.
The second stanza turns more serious. A "grave thought," something heavy and troubling, gets worse the more people discuss it. Anyone who has watched a real worry get flattened by endless talk will recognize the feeling.
In the last stanza the speaker pulls away and hides "where I have not been," a place that seems unfamiliar, perhaps imagined. It sits in an "altered yellow world," which could suggest autumn, given the title, though the word "altered" also makes it feel slightly off. The mood is weary and wry, with a quiet wish to escape. The speaker finds only a strange, fragile refuge, not real comfort.