Balachandran V's poem opens with a picture: a poor, hungry child pressed up against a shop's glass shelves, staring at the sweets inside. He half believes that if he watches long enough, the glass will melt and the treats will walk out to him. It's a child's kind of hope, and it makes the scene more painful.
The poem then turns to the grown-ups who might respond. A shopkeeper might pity him, or simply want the nuisance gone. A kind-hearted customer might buy a sweet and then throw it at him, mainly to get rid of their own guilt. Even the help, in other words, comes with something ugly attached.
The speaker sounds sad and quietly critical, though never angry out loud. The closing lines say the possibilities are many, but the beggar "cannot choose." The mood is bleak: the child can only wait and take whatever is thrown, with no dignity and no say in it.