The title promises a burial at sea, and the poem begins there, out on open water, where rain falls on something that can never become land. The speaker says rain doesn't "make a field" here, so nothing will grow from it, as it would on soil. Yet the rain is still called "a great kindness." Even where nothing is nourished, it seems to offer a gentle, almost tender presence.
The second stanza turns inward. Imagining his own death, the speaker asks who will give him advice, and then, more strangely, what the question will even be. That second line is the unsettling one: he isn't sure what he would need to ask. The mood is quiet, thoughtful, and a little lonely, but not despairing. The speaker seems to accept the mystery of death without demanding answers, finding some comfort in small mercies like rain while admitting how much remains unknown.