Opposition
This is a poem of push and pull, of conflict and submission, injury and dissolution. The sea creatures "slide each on the other" as the sea pulses. The sunlight, though, pierces the sea with "spotlight swiftness." The sea "drives a wedge / of iron through the iron edge / of the cliff" in an unceasing war of attrition (which is more or less Pyrrhic). Humans cut up the cliff with their accidents and marks. This is the reality of the natural world—tough and cutthroat, beautiful and haunting. Conflict is a hallmark of the natural world.
The Power of the Sea
The sea in this poem is many things: violent, alien, beautiful, alluring, vibrant, cruel, unfathomable, powerful, old. It is aggressive, pushing around the creatures within it and crashing into the cliff. It is like "iron," hard and unrelenting. It is full of movement, always flowing and pulsing and pushing. There is no hesitation in its tremendous power, and as it does in "A Grave," the sea here defies human comprehension.
Resilience
The sea attacks the cliff over and over again but the cliff endures; humans can cut up the cliff but it endures. This is a positive image of solidness, tenacity, power in the face of formidable oppression. Similarly, the sea "grows old" but will always remain. These two entities are locked, as critic Darlene Williams Erickson writes, in "a mutually nurturing and mutually destructive embrace."
