The short answer is yes. In English when Death is portrayed as a character, it is usually as a male. (My imagination gives me a skeletal character in a monk's hooded habit, wielding a scythe) And it's a great poem; I hadn't read this one before.

Well... but only if you are really talking in an anthropomorphic way- i.e. Death as the Grim Reaper character with a black cloak and scyth. Ok, that is usually male. But in a more general sense, the pronoun 'it' would be used. 'Death left its mark on this unsuspecting town."

Here's a poem by Emily Dickinson that will also help explain your question. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school, where children strove At recess, in the ring; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. Or rather, he passed us; The dews grew quivering and chill, For only gossamer my gown, My tippet only tulle. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity.

Death in the american mind is another name for the Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper is always portraid as a male, unless some one is trying to be funny/different. Death is the person that comes and takes you to hell/heaven.