At night, the city’s houses stop feeling alive and playful. Fletcher turns them into enormous drowsy giants no longer connected to each other. One clutches a lit window like a toy against its chest, another shifts slightly in its sleep, and a third is simply cold and dead. It is a strange, hushed image of a place that should be familiar but has become distant and eerie.
The speaker seems to be watching from outside, noticing how empty and unpeopled the street has grown. The late moon peers over a giant shoulder fearfully, as if it too is anxious about what it sees: silence where life used to be. The mood is quiet but not peaceful—more like an uneasy dream, with loneliness and something almost ghostly hanging over the city.