The speaker feels utterly erased—forgotten by friends, swallowed by his own sorrows, and tossed between shadows and scorn. He insists, twice, “I am,” as if needing to believe he still exists, even though the world seems to have moved on without him. The middle section throws us into a nightmare of noise and waking dreams, where nothing feels real and even the people he once loved have become strangely distant.
Then the poem shifts. He imagines a place completely untouched by human experience—no footsteps, no laughter or tears—simply to be alone with God. The longing here is not for excitement but for a deep, childlike sleep, where he neither disturbs nor is disturbed. The overall mood is one of profound isolation, yet by the end, there is a surprising calm: a quiet wish to rest under an open sky, finally at peace.