Two voices alternate here. One speaks in the first person, begging a "sandy voice" to cover her, above and below, while something presses down on her body: a branch, a road, a hand, finally a flood. The other voice, in the third person, seems to list what is crushing "her" in the same moment, and it is a strange mix of things: mulberries, quinces, reeds, salt, fever, stealth, anguish, sweat. Natural fruit and plants sit beside bodily and emotional states, so the pain feels both physical and inward.
The chanting "hoo, hoo," "ah, ah," and "hey, hey" sounds like mourning, or perhaps ritual, and the title "Alas" fits that. The speaker seems to want the voice as comfort, yet by the end she is "floundering" in it, as if what she asked for has become another drowning. The mood is hypnotic and suffocating. The repetition builds like a spell or a lament, and the pressure grows from a branch to a flood.