What sense do we make of the critical attitude these remarks display toward philosophy, especially given that Stevens more often than not defined poetry....
The poem begins with "complete destruction" and ends with "unrecognizable footprints", but "burning star → ash → residual heat of Mars" constitutes an energy conservation chain in a closed loop, forming an eternal loop of existential dilemma16.
The whole poem begins with the epic questioning of "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and ends with the solidified image of "a white cloud hanging in the oil painting", forming a closed loop of existential questioning.