The speaker is looking back at childhood and realizing it can't be recovered. Sounds from the past, the "ambient calls," still reach them, but they no longer feel comforting. They seem lurid, distorted, even haunting. Where they once belonged to a time of make-believe, they now point to "old little familiarities" and quietly insist that childhood was only an illusion.
The central image is a candle whose soft light once lit up everything the speaker believed in. Now it has burned down to the end of its wick. The final lines break apart on the page: "And it flick-- / Flickers away." The stumble in the words feels like a flame wavering, and it also suggests a speaker who can hardly bring themselves to say the loss out loud.
The mood is wistful and unsettled, a mix of nostalgia and disillusionment. There is no anger here, just the quiet sadness of watching a belief fade out.