The poem imagines the sea slowly rising from a plain, as if water were being born on dry land. It is described as "swollen as an infant," so it feels both new and threatening. The year in the title, 1943, is the only date we are given, and the poem never says what happened in it. Judging by the imagery, though, that year feels like a turning point, when "everything stopped struggling with its fate."
The speaker seems awed and uneasy rather than openly afraid. Words like "primal" and "primacy" suggest that old, elemental forces have returned, and ordinary things take on meanings they never had before. Red sand, a "bleeding tide," and furrows that turn "red" hint at violence or loss, though the poem leaves this as suggestion. The broken, dash-filled lines make the mood hushed and dreamlike, as if the speaker is remembering something half understood. The result is solemn, eerie, and strangely quiet.