In this poem, an unidentified speaker listens to a woman singing at the seaside in Key West, and follows a train of thought about the nature of creativity and inspiration, as they are manifested in the woman's song. In stanza one, after introducing the unidentified "she," the speaker makes a contrast between her song and the "cry" made by the sea. The water's sound is "inhuman," possesses no "mind or voice," and yet the speaker feels he "understood" it in some way, despite its communication not happening through any human language.
The speaker develops the singer vs. sea distinction more explicitly in stanza two, beginning by saying that neither one was a "mask" for the other. The speaker makes it clear that the woman's song became its own distinct voice, "Even if what she sang was what she heard"—i.e., even if the woman's song were directly inspired by the sea, as we might imagine it is. The third stanza again asserts the woman's authority as the "maker of the song," and the speaker starts wondering if there is a "spirit" behind her inspiration, perhaps like a muse.
In the much longer stanza four, the speaker starts by saying that if all he heard were the ocean, it would seem empty, just "the heaving speech of air." Instead, he says something greater is achieved through the overall combination of sea and song and observers. After the indented line, he goes as far as saying that the woman created her own world through her song: her whole environment, the sea, and the beach on which she sings were made or remade by her art.
After this powerful assertion of the artistic power of creation, the last two stanzas shift tone by turning to address a companion, Ramon Fernandez, to reflect on this newfound perspective after the singing ends. The speaker now sees the harbor as a wondrous scene in which the night is ordered and organized by the lights of anchored fishing boats, similar to how he believed the woman's song was remaking or giving order to the beach scene. In the final lines, the speaker cries out to his friend in wonder at artists' "rage for order," the desire and ability to use art to give meaning to nature and the surrounding world.
