Mary Norbert Körte's poem puts us inside a room that feels impossibly distant, "farther away than a window," where the speaker is completely alone. That line comes back again and again, like a bell tolling, and each time it lands a little heavier. Around it, the images grow strange and dreamlike: a huge wall "heavy with sleep" that feeds on dark air, light that is "prisoned" and slow, and a body feverish with longing.
The speaker seems caught between wanting and fearing. Desire is present, but it is silent ("how still the mouth of desire"), and the idea of turning toward it through the "knitted door" means falling into a "black-longing fire." So the speaker stays put. The final lines, "I do not move / and I am alone," read as a choice as much as a trap. The mood is tense, hushed and claustrophobic, a stillness charged with fear and yearning.