The speaker of "Goth" seems caught between a plain, daylight world and a hunger for something darker and larger. The poem opens with a strange, almost fatalistic image: going to burn in the burnyard, a place where rubbish is destroyed. Yet the speaker adds that a dog would save them, a small flash of loyalty or rescue in the midst of the bleakness.
The second stanza turns sour. The speaker's mouth is "worse" than the night before, which suggests a hangover or a bad taste of some kind, and the world around them is "corn-ordinary," something they openly scorn. The word "corn" suggests a rural, everyday sameness, and the speaker wants out of it.
The last stanza answers that boredom with desire. The speaker's wish to see "in and with the night" is called infinite, as if darkness offers a kind of vision that daylight can't. The mood is moody, defiant and a little theatrical, mixing disgust with a stubborn, hopeful craving for something deeper than the ordinary.