What is the main conflict in The Continuous Life by Mark Strand?

Mark Strand's poem "The Continuous Life" originally appeared in The New Yorker and is the title poem of his 1990 poetry collection by the same name. The volume contains poems written between 1980 and 1990, some humorous, some serious, some whose tone is in between. Critics have called "The Continuous Life" a perfect poem, and other readers seem to agree. New York City, for example, thought so highly of the poem they had it inscribed on a park bench in Hudson River Park. Appearing roughly in the middle of the collection, sandwiched between "Life in the Valley" and "From a Lost Diary," the poem resonates with images of absence and death, Strand's trademark subjects.