The speaker describes a body and mind slowly sinking under a weight he can't quite name. It starts with a kind of early gravity: stern, final-sounding sentences and tidy arguments that settle in the mind like loose skin disappearing after a facelift. Each morning and evening he lies down on the same "mattress of bone" and carries on as if nothing is wrong, as if tiredness were the only problem. But the image of a "jagged piece of sky" pressing on his neck suggests something heavier, perhaps the world's troubles. Though he has stopped following the news, his dreams bring back earthquakes, torture, and starvation anyway.
The mood is weary, anxious, and darkly wry. Sleepless nights become pretend mornings spent hunting for poems. The ending turns strange: even breathing, something shared by everyone, may be wearing him down, leaving a "swamp of light." He tries not to take that too seriously, which only makes it linger.