A speaker sits alone at an open window at night, staring into the dark and trying not to cry. The poem is about the pull of escape: the wish to be "far away," though the speaker never says where that is or what they are leaving behind. That vagueness is part of its feeling. The longing seems bigger than any one place.
The window is the poem's main image. Cold air and rain slip in through it, and the rain "caresses" the speaker's face as if "asking for help," so the weather almost seems to share the sadness. Then the speaker watches cars drive off into the distance, and the wish sharpens. They want to be inside one of them, leaving too. The repeated "far away" works like a sigh that keeps returning. The mood is quiet, lonely and wistful, with a feeling of being stuck on the inside, watching everything else move.