The speaker wanders into a shop at six in the morning, while the street is still dark and just beginning to wake. The opening images are vivid and a little odd: dawn as a "red-knit furrow," darkness like "marble blocks," a Turkish beggar passing by. Inside, a bell chimes, the speaker flips through art magazines, and the time is repeated, "It's six o'clock," as if the hour hangs in the air and refuses to move.
The shopkeeper is a silent watcher, brooding in his chair. The poem's mood turns uneasy in the last stanza. A burning camel and "Tigris eyes" bring in strange, vaguely eastern images, and the speaker insists, "I've sinned no major sin," which sounds like a person who feels watched and wants to defend himself. The final line, "I purchase those I come to like," is calm but a bit unsettling.
Overall the mood is dreamlike, quiet, and slightly guilty, like a half-remembered early-morning scene.