Throughout the poem hints at constructive pursuits (making a snowman) and artistic objects (a guitar, a bust of Shakespeare). The thief steals an destroys but cannot make anything. He realises at the end of the poem that the person he is speaking to cannot understand his outlook; "you don’t understand a word I'm saying" doesn’t refer to his words literally, so much as the ideas he expresses. The poem is rather bleak, as if anti-social behaviour is almost inevitable. The speaker sees the consequences of his actions but has no compassion for his victims. He cares more for the snowman, an inanimate object than the living human children who have made it. And he wants what has already been made - he cannot see for himself how to make his own snowman. The thief is morally confused - he sees "not taking what you want" as "giving in", as if you might as well be dead as accept conventional morality. Bit he alienates us by saying that he enjoyed taking the snowman because he knew that the theft would upset the children. "Life's tough" is said as if to justify this. The sequel comes when the thief tries to reassemble the snowman. Not surprisingly (snow is not a permanent material) "he didn't look the same", so the thief attacks him. All he is left with is "lumps of snow". This could almost be a metaphor for the self-defeating nature of his thefts. The thief tells us boastfully that he "sometimes" steals things he doesn’t need, yet it seems that he always steals what he does not need and cannot use. He breaks in our curiosity, "to have a look" but does not understand what he sees. He is pathetic, as he seems anxious to make a mark of some kind, whether leaving a "mess" or steaming up mirrirs wih his breakth. He casually mentions how he might "pinch" a camerca - it is worth little to him, but much to those whose memories it has recorded. The final stanze seems more honest. The bravao has gone and the thief's real motivation emerges - boredom, which comes from his inibility to make or do anything which gives pleasure. The theftt of the guitar is typically self-decieving. He thinks he might learn to play but the reader knows this will not happen as it takes time and patience which the thief does not have. Stealing the "bust of Shakespeare" also seems itonic to the reader. The thief takes an image of perhaps the greatest creative talent the world has ever seen - but without any sense what it snads for, or of te riches of Shkespeare's drama. The final line, which recalls the poem's converstaional opening - the thief has sensed not just the person that he is speaking to is disturbed by his confession ut also that the reader of the poem doesn’t "understand" him. This poem is colloquial but the speaking voice here is very distinct. Sometimes the speaker uses striking images("a muky ghost") and some unlikely vocabulary ("he looked magnificent") but he also uses cliches ("Life's tough"). Single words are written as sentences ("Mirrors... Again... Boredom"). Mostly the lines are not end-stopped: the breaks for punctuation are in themiddles of lines, to create the effect of improvised natural speech. The speaker is trying to explain his actions, but condems himself out of his own mouth.