The title promises a paradox: dying of thirst beside a fountain. It recalls a famous line usually linked with the medieval French poet Villon, though the poem never says so. Tom Raworth's short poem turns that paradox into a mood. The speaker is surrounded by what should nourish him, including books, an argument, the sounds of other people, and a household going about its evening. He is too depleted to take any of it in. The poem ends in a plain admission of being stuck: "this room is cold / and i'm in trouble."
The opening lines set up a world of motion the speaker can't join. "they pass & i turn" gives us a crowd or a stretch of time going by while he only swivels in place. Then comes "but you know this", an address to someone who is never identified. The poem leaves "you" unexplained, so we feel we have walked into the middle of a long, tired conversation. Next, "the act / revolves around itself" makes the circling literal. "Turn" and "revolves" echo each other, and the language goes round without getting anywhere, which is exactly the trap he is describing.
What the speaker says about his work is both vague and revealing. "my time / goes marked by letters" might mean correspondence, or reading, or writing, or the alphabet itself. The poem doesn't settle it, and the ambiguity suits a mind too weary to be exact. "some / enthusiasms vanish" is deliberately flat. Even losing his passions is reported without drama. The only vivid boast is almost comic: "in arguing / with you i've used up many books". Arguing is figured as consumption, as if ideas were fuel and he has burned through the supply. The next sentence is blunt: "the work is too much." It is one of the few places where a full stop sits firmly in the text, and it works like a door closing.
The form helps to carry the exhaustion. There is no rhyme and no regular beat. The lines are short and often end on weak, unfinished words such as "but" and "no", so we are left hanging at each break. The best example is "i have no / energy". The word "energy" sits alone on its own line, surrounded by white space, and the poem seems to run out of power right there. Then the grammar loosens: "to mould them sky darkens now / the snow is grey sounds of cooking a / movement of plates". We get no punctuation and no clear boundary between thoughts. Even "them" is uncertain, since it could refer to the books, the enthusiasms or the letters. The effect is of attention drifting from inner struggle to the window and then to the ears, with everything arriving at the same level.
That last cluster of images is the heart of the poem. The darkening sky and grey snow give a colourless, wintry outside. The "sounds of cooking" suggest warmth and company, but they are only sounds, heard from a distance. Here the fountain of the title seems to appear, in the ordinary life going on within earshot. The line break after "a" delays "movement of plates", which can be read simply as dishes being shifted. The word "movement" also hints at something slower and larger, like shifting ground or a musical piece, though that reading is mine rather than anything the poem insists on. Either way, it is activity, and none of it includes him.
The final two lines sit apart as their own stanza and drop the drifting style completely. "this room is cold / and i'm in trouble" is as plain as speech can be. After all the circling, there is almost relief in such directness. The understatement is the point. "In trouble" could mean anything from a bad mood to real crisis, and the speaker doesn't dress it up.
The poem is worth reading because it makes a familiar feeling, being overwhelmed by too much to do and think, feel physically true through its gaps, lowercase "i" and loose syntax. It avoids self-pity and keeps to small, exact details, and it trusts the reader to feel the thirst without being told.