The poem moves from a world that once felt manageable to one that feels too big, too tangled, and slightly out of reach. At first, worlds were "small as battleships" or a few ballfields, "enough to be perfect." Now things "go wrong," and the speaker senses a vague, unsettled expectation, with no "god-like power" to make sense of it all. Even math, which might promise order, is described casually as a bag of tricks.
The mention of Goya going mad and of Swift suggests the speaker is thinking about how minds and lives wear down over time. History becomes "a map" with "no time," and the poem ends in "black places" and "dead forgotten flags." The mood is quiet, uneasy, and a little sad. Eigner's broken, clipped lines mimic a mind drifting from thought to thought, so the poem feels less like an argument and more like watching someone think about loss and the way everything passes.