The speaker sounds like someone taking stock of a life that feels hollow. The "collection of lies and employments" puts jobs and falsehoods side by side, as if the work they do, perhaps the work of a reporter, as the title hints, is just another kind of pretending. Sorting them "in order" is a tidy, almost clerical act, which makes the admission more bitter.
The middle lines move through despair in a flat, matter-of-fact way. Living "on no hope" is described as "an experiment," and the speaker dances to "the great evil of this year," a grim, odd image of going through the motions while things go wrong. "A miscarriage of time" suggests a year that failed before it could become anything.
The ending is the most striking. The speaker knows only "the hole," yet keeps going, licking ink. It's a small, strange gesture that suggests the writing is both nourishment and something slightly bitter. The mood is numb, wry, and stubbornly persistent.