The speaker watches a stiff, formal-looking man leave a public urinal for the fifth or sixth time in one night, still alone. The setting and the repeated comings and goings suggest a place where men look for anonymous encounters, though the poem never says so outright. The speaker imagines that this man has spent years rejecting such "releases" as beneath him, and now finds himself rejected by the very thing he despised. The speaker thinks this must be close to maddening.
What the speaker feels is pity, mixed with worry. He follows the man, afraid for him, but the kindness backfires: the man seems only more hurt by being pitied, and keeps walking. The mood is quiet, uneasy and a little bleak. The short, plain lines feel like a glimpse caught in passing, and the ending, "I have not seen him again," leaves the speaker with no resolution, only a lingering sense of a stranger's humiliation and his own failed attempt to help.