This is an analysis of the poem "The Same Moon Above Us", by Pittsburgh native and current New Jersey resident Gerald Stern.

Same Moon Above Us Analysis In Gerald Stern's "The Same Moon Above Us", the unfortunate plight of a homeless man living in NYC is compared to the despair of Ovid, one of Rome's most prolific poets during the decades immediately preceding and following the death of Christ. In 9 A.D., Augustus Caesar sent him into exile for unknown reasons to live in a primitive town called Tomis on the Black Sea. For seven years, Ovid …

…that he has, while it lasts, for time will gamble it away, as it does to all (some more than others). So, forever bilingual, speaking in two vernaculars, the languages of happiness and misery, Stern will sing of his suffering, as will we all, trying to reclaim that paradise, or desperately trying to taste its fruits for the first, until the day that we pass from this world, into another world, then peaceful and serene.