The poem sketches an uncomfortable exchange with someone, perhaps a colleague or housemate, where even a simple "good morning" goes wrong. The opening line, "the badness of our good morning," sets the tone: politeness is present, but it feels hollow or sour. The other person tells "long stories out of nothing," and the speaker seems worn down by all that talk with so little in it.
The middle stanza turns inward. The speaker calls their own mind "unkind" and hard to put in order, yet says this isn't "because of owning it," which suggests a restless, unsettled state they can't quite claim or explain. The last stanza widens out to the shared space, where talk about "being" and the demands of work become "a plague."
The poem's fragments and odd phrasing add to the mood: tired, irritable, a little trapped. Judging by the title, the "pleasantries" are the very thing that wears the speaker down.