The speaker longs to split into eight people, because being just one means carrying every complication alone. As eight, the difficulties would "vanish." Instead, the speaker sits in a warm, strange house, replaying reels of images that never change, even as the emphasis on them shifts. The actors in those reels bow politely, and the speaker envies them for having fixed parts and a steady place in their world.
What stands out is how the poem repeats and rearranges its own lines. Phrases like "the rib-cage of an elephant," "grey mornings," and "only as one I contain the complications" return in new combinations, so the poem starts to feel like the reels it describes. By the end, the images blur together and the roles swap, with the dreamer, the actors and the house all mixed up.
The mood is dreamlike, wistful and a little trapped. The speaker wants escape and company, yet seems stuck in a loop of memory and longing.