Why should you hold your hands cupped that I may drop into them my arrogant gift without deigning to defile myself?
You are a man, aren’t you, fawning there before me, mouthing the words you think I want to hear, bowing your turban lower, lower, lower.
Stand up on your two feet, lift your head to the sky, knock the hated pittance out of my hand and look me in the eye!
The speaker is a person of privilege, probably someone giving alms, who addresses a poor man with a broom, a sweeper, as he cups his hands to receive a coin. What's striking is that the speaker isn't comfortable in the role. At first the questions sound cruel: why must he hold out his hands so the giver can avoid "defiling" herself? But that phrase turns the criticism back on the speaker, who calls her own gift "arrogant" and the money a "hated pittance." She is disgusted less by him than by the whole arrangement.
The poem moves from accusation to something close to a plea. His bowing and flattering, the turban dipping "lower, lower, lower," stand for a humiliation both of them are performing. By the end she demands that he stand tall, slap the coin away, and meet her eyes. The mood is tense and uneasy, full of guilt and a longing for dignity, a wish that he would refuse the role the speaker plays too.