Here the speaker looks at humans with a cold, almost scientific eye, calling us "a biological organism" and "a bipedal mammal." Then the poem imagines early people gathering around a fire and making what it calls their "greatest mistake": turning noises into language. The speaker's complaint is that language lets us talk to ourselves instead of to each other, and that grammar invents the "I," the feeling that something separate lives inside us.
The speaker seems frustrated, even a little bitter, but also longing. The poem moves from blunt statements to two questions near the end. One asks whether we can simply feel sensation, the "vibration" and "eternal energy" running through us. The other asks whether there is any escape from days that feel "dull & repetitive." The mood is restless and reflective, tinged with weariness. The questions are left unanswered, so the poem ends on an uncertain, searching note rather than a solution.