I think this is about euthenasia, or at least death as tomstrangelove and leif erikson have said. The narrator is at his elderly relative's deathbed and he's describing the man's last thoughts. The dying man is looking back on his life's ups and downs ("Ran to ground for a while there / But I came off pretty well"). "You, the only sense this world has ever made" are his offsping, perhaps the daughter that he taught "to whistle like a boy". He chooses the final thought and memory on his mind as he dies. I think the third verse is his family switching off his life support.
The trinket is this final view of his life as leif erikson explained.
Incoherent: "last of the men in hats hops off the coil" is this dying man who lived in an earlier age when men all wore hats. "This mortal coil" is a metaphor for life from Hamlet.
I think this is about euthenasia, or at least death as tomstrangelove and leif erikson have said. The narrator is at his elderly relative's deathbed and he's describing the man's last thoughts. The dying man is looking back on his life's ups and downs ("Ran to ground for a while there / But I came off pretty well"). "You, the only sense this world has ever made" are his offsping, perhaps the daughter that he taught "to whistle like a boy". He chooses the final thought and memory on his mind as he dies. I think the third verse is his family switching off his life support. The trinket is this final view of his life as leif erikson explained.
Incoherent: "last of the men in hats hops off the coil" is this dying man who lived in an earlier age when men all wore hats. "This mortal coil" is a metaphor for life from Hamlet.