The speaker does something absurd and oddly intimate: he tells his mind to his sandwich, as if the lunch on his plate were the only safe listener. The title, "Secret agent," fits. Whatever he says is treated like intelligence passed along in private, though the recipient is about as harmless as a confidant can get.
What he confides is a bleak, slightly surreal picture of a place. It is a "country of creeds and good chocolate," where rigid beliefs sit beside small pleasures, and where "the young get vicious." The last lines tilt into fantasy: the king's ear is "with child / as water is with ice." Judging by the image, rumor or power seems to be carrying something that will harden and take shape, the way water turns to ice.
The mood is wry, uneasy and half-joking. There's a sense of dread about society, delivered in a deadpan voice that keeps it from turning into a speech.