plundering motion by which power avails itself...

[Eway]

From Seven Lies by James Lasdun:

"Outside the Manhattan Fish Market, where I used to linger admiringly every time I passed, I fell into something like my old marveling delight. But it seemed unstable now, encroached on by some looming unease that required a deliberate effort to resist. What was this? ... Could it have been the customers themselves, my fellow citizens, crowding at the counter to take delivery of their dinners, unaware that their guileless faces, their soft-fleshed bellies hanging before them like gentle, spherical pets, their wallet-waving arms, had by some strange quirk of fate come to form the universal hieroglyph for that blunt, plundering motion by which power avails itself of whatever sustenance it requires?"

What is "the universal hieroglyph for that blunt, plundering motion by which power avails itself of whatever sustenance it requires"? What's it talking about?

[Anglika]

The way in which the people look and move personifies the way in which power [which is always slow and heavy but purposeful in its actions] takes whatever it is that feeds it.