Written in the 1990s, when "multiculturalism" had become a common idea among academics and intellectuals, this poem shows enough awareness about world culture to recognize that reincarnation is one of the central tenets of the Hindu religion, which is the dominant religion of India. Still, it shows little understanding of the details of the Hindu belief in rebirth, other than the broad idea that humans may come back as other forms of life after they have died. William Stafford was a poet well known for his skill in capturing the feeling of the American West, with its open plains representing both desolation and possibility, and for understanding the American moral beliefs that his countrymen so seldom saw represented in print. To some degree, his superficial rendering of Asian religious belief can be considered another facet of his regional identity, since Americans are notorious throughout the world for...