The speaker starts out sounding confident and in control. He sharpens a knife and drives it into "the flesh of time," as if time were a piece of meat on a block and he were the one doing the cutting. But the poem turns on its last lines. The repeated "chopping" builds a steady, almost mechanical rhythm, and then we learn that what is being sliced thin is "me." The butcher and the meat are the same person.
The poem seems to be about how we spend our lives. Trying to use up, fill, or master time ends up using us up instead. Each hour we chop away is a piece of ourselves gone. The title suggests a worker doing a daily job, which hints at routine and the way ordinary days wear a person down.
The mood is bleak and a little eerie. The calm, repetitive action makes the self-harm feel quiet and unavoidable. The trailing dots at the end leave the cutting unfinished, as though it will keep going.