It's a winter evening in a city. The speaker addresses us, narrating the wet newspapers that hit our feet and the broken, dirty features of the city around us. As night falls, people begin to light their lamps. In the second stanza, it's morning, and we consider the people rising early to rush out into the mud and get to work. Night falls again in stanza 3, and the speaker narrates our insomnia. Sordid thoughts preoccupy our mind until dawn, when we notice our hands and feet are dirty from the day before. In stanza 4, we arrive in the business center of town at the end of a workday. A soul floats around unnoticed, occasionally winding up trampled under feet of people leaving work for the day. The speaker feels emotionally moved by this, and we flash back to an image of the past, where women are gathering fuel to start a fire.