Nothing in this short poem settles into a plain story, and that seems to be the point. It piles up strange images of a ship, a sea and a sky, and lets them clash. Fish have rivets in their eyes, as if living things have been bolted into machinery. Migrant birds dangle from the binnacle, the case that holds a ship's compass, so even navigation looks tangled up with the natural world. God is "held" to a "trading tide," which suggests faith pulled into the business of buying and selling.
The middle lines grow louder. Words "crowd the wind markets," and the shuttlecocks caught in a net feel like play gone wrong. By the end, shouting "biomass" hisses out "shibboleths," or empty password phrases, trying to reach Heaven. Judging by the title and imagery, the speaker seems wary or mocking of a world run on trade, noise and slogans. The mood is restless, cluttered and darkly comic, with a hint of unease underneath.