The poem turns the sun and moon into a father and son. The sun spends the day searching cities, country roads and islands for a "slender hand" to hold, and finds nothing worth his longing. Disappointed, he sits back with a glass of Cabernet and sends his son, the moon, to search at night using borrowed light.
The moon's search is the more earthy one. He drifts through broken-glass alleys, under bridges, past cardboard beds, into crowded bars and theatres full of song. Still, nothing on earth or in the sea compares to the sky itself, with its "cloud-swept grace and star-borne flare."
The tone is playful but wistful. The speaker seems to look on humanity with some affection and some sadness, since the city's lonelier corners are lit up and then found lacking. The ending suggests that what the sun truly wants is already above us, and perhaps that we overlook our own beauty. The mood is dreamy, a little melancholy, and gently ironic.