In a Station of the Metro Theme of Man and the Natural World

In the poem, people and nature literally become one as the faces in the subway become flowers on a tree. The analogy between faces and flowers is not just a simile, which would say that one thing is "like" another. Rather, it is metaphor: the poem implies that the faces are petals on a tree.

1. Does the difference in rhythm between the first and the second lines signal a difference between man and nature?
2. Does "wet, black bough" succeed in making the subway seem beautiful and mysterious, or does it just make the tree sound ugly?
3. If you didn’t know that the poem was a haiku, would you think that the natural setting was necessarily Japanese or Asian?
4. How does Pound’s use of metaphor unify man and nature in the poem?

The poem isn’t trying to make the subway seem like a natural setting. It’s trying to create a fictional space where both natural and unnatural settings can co-exist.