The speaker describes an emptiness inside them that rings like an empty metal container, and the poem follows their attempt to fill it with color. Each day has a hue: red on Monday, blue on Tuesday, and yellow was supposed to arrive on Wednesday. But the gleam they hoped to catch slipped away before they could show it any love, so they're left with a black, flat view that sits in a cheap frame.
From there the poem shifts into an image of a wounded robot, painted white, wandering a barren landscape where the speaker's imagination once played. It seems to be a stand-in for the speaker, or for the mind that has gone mechanical. Yet the ending softens. The robot gathers glints from the granite with its sensitive eyes, and these may fill the hollow a little. The mood begins cold, numb and lonely, then turns toward a quiet, cautious hope.