The speaker starts the poem by describing his physical surroundings, noting the furniture and decorations present in his room. It's not clear whether this is a bedroom, a study, or some combination of the two; the speaker dives into this list of objects without any preamble to orient the reader.
In doing so, the speaker immediately establishes an atmosphere that feels overwhelming, hectic, and confusing. The asyndeton of these opening lines adds to that anxious atmosphere, the speaker bouncing between objects without pausing to add conjunctions between each item.
The mention of a "work-table, litter, books, and standing lamp," meanwhile, suggests that the speaker's work has to do with writing: readers might imagine the speaker hunched over a desk, surrounded by books, scraps of paper littering the floor.
When the speaker then mentions his "stalled equipment," this is the first indicator of his inability to work/write. His "equipment" might be a metaphor for his mind, which isn't working the way it should, or for a pen or pencil, which is literally "stalled"—motionless—because the speaker hasn't been able to write. When he then says that he lives in a "tidied room," this might mean he's somewhere separate from this messy workspace, or that his normally messy workspace is now neat and tidy (implicitly because he hasn't been able to do the messy work of creating lately).
The poem is written in loose pentameter, each line having approximately 10 syllables. Yet, as readers can see in these first three lines, the meter itself is pretty irregular, the pattern of stressed and unstressed beats occasionally iambic (da-DUM) but generally unpredictable:
Work-ta- | ble, lit- | ter, books | and stand- | ing lamp,
plain things, | my stalled | equip- | ment, the | old broom—
but I | am liv- | ing in | a ti- | died room,
This keeps things feeling free-wheeling up top, again evoking the speaker's scattered state of mind. The use of rhyme and sonic devices like assonance, alliteration, and consonance, meanwhile, tie the lines together, lending the poem a sense of musicality and rhythm that pulls readers forward.
Here, for example, note the crisp consonance of /k/, /t/, b/, /t, and /s/ sounds, plus the assonance of "standing lamp":
Work-table, litter, books and standing lamp,
The flurry of sounds might evoke the flurry of the anxieties that lead to the speaker's "night sweats."