Isabel Milkovich

The woman’s song and the song of the sea supplement each other. They add to each other, but neither overpowers the other. “The sea was not a mask. No more was she.” It is the woman’s song that entices the onlookers because it is alive with her genius, but she isn’t fighting the ocean. Her song rolls along with the rhythm of the ocean’s song, and the ocean’s song and rhythm provide a place for her to sing. “There never was a world for her/Except the one she sang and, singing, made.” Walking along the ocean is the only world the woman knows, and so in a way the ocean provides comfort and protection for her. The woman’s song lifts up the ocean’s song because she makes people notice and contemplate the ocean’s song, even if it is only to determine that the woman’s song is the livelier one.

The woman makes the world in which the ocean sings, because their songs, when sung together, become one. They fuse to make an even deeper song than what is noticed by the onlookers because they are not part of the world in which she and the ocean sing. “She was the single artificer of the world/In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,/Whatever self it had, became the self/That was her song, for she was the maker.” The woman and the sea become one self in their world together, because it is just the two of them, and together they make a song that connects them to the world that we know. They make this connection because at the end of the day they know they must return to our reality and be simply a woman, and simply the sea.