Of more importance to me was the fact that Po may have been able to (poetically) send the goose to Merwin, but, because of current climate and political change, Merwin projects that (poetically) no one will be able, in a thousand or so years, to keep that creature alive since we are now in the process of”melting the very poles of the earth”.

So, the poem not only links civilizations, but makes an important statement about what the poet, a man who lives in a remote spot in Hawaii, sees as the beginning of the end of the natural world…as he knows it.

Merwin has written a prior poem that was a litany of important poets in his life who have died. And I read this one as a sad commentary on the transfer of a living creature, symbolically, from Po to Merwin, to…. no one, in Merwin’s mind, anyway..no poet in line in the far future because of the disintegration of our planet.

The poem was sparse, elegiac, and one that ought to be studied in lower level schools now–not only by poets.