A walk through a city at night becomes something close to a walk through a wild, hungry jungle. The speaker fills the streets with animal images: drunks cackle like hyenas, stray cats fight over scraps, and sirens howl like wolves. Even the people are turned into predators, with "power-hungry killers" stalking the dark. The buildings aren't comforting either. Their artificial lights expose every flaw, making them look ugly rather than welcoming. The only gentle thing is the harvest moon, the one natural light in a world of concrete.
The speaker seems uneasy and watchful, and the mood is tense and threatening. The short lines near the end, "Was that a pair of eyes? / Or just an illusion," capture that jumpy, half-imagined fear. Then the poem turns to the reader with a direct challenge: if you were cold and alone out there, would you be brave? It leaves us sitting with that question rather than answering it.