The metro station is the primary setting of this poem, though its physical reality is thrown into chaos and question in the work of a single line. Despite this doubt, Pound makes clear that the narrator of the poem is underground, in the midst of busy commuters in urban, industrialized Paris. He is surrounded by a "crowd," barraged by a series of "faces," all of whom are presumably on their way to work or on their way home (1). This makes the second line all the more striking: Pound suddenly equates the faces to "petals" on a "wet, black bough" (2). Though the physical setting of the poem is industrial, dark, and man-made, Pound's imagination injects the power and beauty of nature into the busy metro station. In this way, the power of industrialized, man-made settings is challenged by man's love of nature. The fact of the metro station makes...