The speaker walks a broken shoreline, past burned bridges and jagged rock, and finally stops, worn out, on a fragmented rock. From there the poem turns inward. The speaker brooding over a "perjured past" of faded smiles, and a painful truth has arrived that is too sharp to ignore. It keeps sleep away and forces a stare at "what is wrecked." The poem doesn't say what exactly went wrong, but the imagery suggests a relationship or a trust that has fallen apart.
Down by the docks, the speaker looks for some desperate way out. The staked docks stay fixed in place while the sea pulls hard against them, and the speaker has no such anchor. In the last line, drained of strength, the speaker drifts away on "empty fancy," a daydream that offers escape but no real comfort. The mood is heavy, tired, and bleak, with a sense of giving in rather than breaking free.