In just six short lines, this poem takes a dry look at office work and finds it pointless. The speaker describes "all the lost time" spent in a workplace, and the word "lost" sets the tone straight away: these hours are gone, and nothing much came of them.
The second stanza makes the point through a small, grimly funny image. Instead of getting anything done, "we" simply "even out the dust," spreading it around rather than clearing it. The work is busywork, a way of looking occupied without changing anything. The dust is also something "one durst not breathe," and the old-fashioned word "durst" gives the line a slightly stiff, warning tone, as if there were a rule against admitting how stale the place feels.
The speaker sounds weary and quietly sardonic, and includes themselves with the word "we." The mood is flat and stifling, like air in a room where no one opens a window. The title, "Management," adds a dry joke: what is being managed is mostly dust.