This study explores the relationship between poetry and the natural world; the question of whether language can ever faithfully depict the natural world.  To address this issue, Salah Jaheen's poem “On the Name of Egypt" (1971) will be analyzed. It is a historical document in which Jaheen narrated the history of Egypt from the pharaonic era till a moment of history in which Mohammad Farid, the ideal patriot was fighting for freedom. Although the poem is not viewed within the scope of  ecocriticism, according to the third-wave ecocritics, the poem can be analyzed from this angle—the way poetic depiction of the natural world reflects human culture and intention, rather than the physical world. While Jaheen attempts to get hold of the natural world through poetic techniques, his technique fails to achieve this goal by recognizing the distance that exists between words and the worlds to which they refer. To address this critical gap, Jaheen uses three strategies —the limitations of language, qualifying language, and the theme of loss-- to examine the complex relationship between poetry and the natural world. The examination suggests that Jaheen makes the poem an object of inquiry, the outcome of the inquiry is the creation of knowledge; a form of epistemological phenomenon.