The title promises protection, but the poem is about what protection costs. The speaker lives in a safe country and calls himself poor, not because anything is missing in the ordinary sense, but because there is no disorder. Safety has left him short of something he seems to need.
The three images in the second stanza are a kind of wish list. Loose paper suggests unfinished, scattered thinking. Mad eyes suggest intensity, a refusal to look calm. Frequent attempts to pray are the most telling: the word "attempts" implies the praying doesn't quite work, yet he keeps trying. These are signs of a restless inner life, and the speaker seems to miss them.
The mood is dry, quietly ironic, and a little hungry. Nothing is shouted. The poem suggests that a tidy, secure life can leave a person strangely empty, longing for the mess that comes with real feeling and searching.