The narrator serves as the organizing consciousness of the poem, walking the city streets across different times of day and night. Initially, this figure functions as a detached observer who catalogs the sights, smells, and sounds of an impoverished urban environment. The narrator later reveals a deeply empathetic interior life, becoming emotionally affected by the isolation and repetitive routines of the city's inhabitants.

The woman is a city resident, suggested to be a sex worker, who spends the night dozing in a furnished room. Her mind is highly active, projecting sordid images onto the ceiling as she waits for morning. At dawn, she experiences a profound but unexplained realization about the street outside, though she returns immediately to mundane tasks like removing her hair curlers.

The man is a mysterious, symbolic figure who appears over the darkened city as evening approaches. He carries an urgent desire to connect with the people below and wishes to act as the conscience of the blackened street. He represents an obscured spiritual element in a highly industrialized, routine-driven world, though his presence goes largely unnoticed by the passing crowds.

The anonymous inhabitants of the city's tenement buildings follow strict daily routines dictated entirely by clock time. They are depicted not as complete individuals but as fragmented body parts, such as muddy feet trampling sawdust, hands raising dingy shades, and short square fingers stuffing pipes. They endure a mechanized, monotonous existence driven by physical labor.