A speaker looks up as starlings settle on a wire overhead, and in just four short lines the poem shifts how the speaker's own troubles feel. The key phrase is "greater than my aches." The birds aren't bigger in size, of course. They're greater in the sense that they belong to a wider, livelier world that doesn't stop for one person's pain. The speaker doesn't say what the aches are, and that vagueness lets them stay quiet and ordinary, the kind of tiredness or sorrow many people carry around.
The feeling here isn't bitter or self-pitying. It seems closer to relief, or humble acceptance. The starlings simply "mew," a soft, almost cat-like sound, and that small noise becomes a kind of company. The mood is hushed and gentle. Because the lines are so brief, the poem feels like a held breath: the speaker pauses, listens, and lets something outside themselves matter more than what hurts inside.