A person walks through a city at night, and the walk quickly turns into something more painful. The streets are cold and wet, but the lights give them a strange beauty. They "glow on the concrete" and "kindle the night," as if the dark were being set alight. Rain on the speaker's glasses even turns the lights into stars.
Then the mood shifts. A "sudden hollowing vision" of "rusty brown bars" cuts in, and the speaker's father is imprisoned. The mother is "a grey stone," which suggests she has gone cold, silent, or unreachable. Judging by these images, the speaker feels abandoned by both parents in different ways.
The repeated line "I walk these cold streets" returns at the end with a bleak addition: "I walk them alone." The poem moves from brief wonder to loneliness, leaving a quiet, sad, and wary mood.