I kept a promise I never made
In light airs, a tropic of indifference;
And never was resolve by lack of action betrayed,
But fate must be satisfied by inference.
Letting go the edge was ease, a lysis; luffs
Do lose such depth and so blur summit then
That “thus the seething sea sufficeth us,”
And time will reattach to him, her, one, it, them.
Light airs – A nautical term meaning a gentle wind moving at 1‑3 knots, number 1 on the Beaufort scale. When considered not as a nautical term but as two words in their broader meaning, “light airs” might suggest lighthearted or frivolous behavior, as in “putting on airs.”
Tropic – Here a singular noun (not “the Tropics,” i.e., the Earth’s Torrid Zone, and not the adjective “tropical”); a tropic is a limit, as in the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn which are the northernmost and southernmost latitudes respectively at which the sun is exactly overhead at noon. Since there are only those two tropics, any additional one would necessarily be imaginary.
Lysis – (Pronounced LY-sis) A medical term, here the cutting away of scar tissue to ease pain. “Lysis” can also mean the gradual improvement of an illness or the dissolution of a cell membrane.
Luffs – Here a plural noun meaning loose flapping motions, from the verb “to luff,” a nautical term meaning to shake un‑tensioned in the wind as does a sail on a boat pointed directly into the wind.
Thus the seething sea sufficeth us – This phrase is the last line of a well‑known tongue‑twister: The seething sea ceaseth to seethe, And thus the seething sea sufficeth us. As a tongue‑twister concocted to maximize the difficulty of saying “s” and “th” in rapid succession, the phrase is simply a phonetic joke — a game — and means nothing. Here, however, it has been put into a context that suggests a meaning: giving up control, perhaps giving up one’s life, perhaps a suicide at sea from the images of “letting go the edges” and “luffs,” losing the distinction between the depth and height of a wave or of an emotion; detaching oneself from time. Drowning oneself at sea would leave no trace so that suicide could never be proven and “Fate must be satisfied by inference.”