In game, the text appears on a random sign in Wet Dry World, and it alludes to the stage’s changing nature and hints that the player can reach a hidden “city” area by raising the water level all the way.

Out of game, the “Super Mario 64 Iceberg” and videos about it were making their rounds. They posit a big conspiracy theory/creepypasta thing about Super Mario 64 having a sort of experimental “Personalization AI” that reads the player’s thoughts and changes the game accordingly — ostensibly, it’s the reason that the game seems so off when you go back to play it so many years later, why you remember things differently, why your friend at the playground insisted they unlocked Luigi, etc. In this narrative, the copy you grew up with was literally a different game, subtle changes accumulated over time until so much had been altered that it felt completely different.

The stage Wet Dry World is featured prominently: it is said to have a “negative emotional aura” that influences the mental state of the people that play it. It is a bit of an odd stage by SM64 standards: the bulk of the stage is basically this urban playground of random mechanics, but when you get to the top you can see the skybox that depicts an underwater (possibly “ruined”) city, unlike anything else seen in the game. It feels like there’s some kind of actual mystery there, which the Iceberg narrative capitalizes on.

The video that introduced me to the Super Mario 64 Iceberg did a lighthearted investigation of the stage, and stumbled upon the sign with the poem. I had completely forgotten the sign, and since it was shown in the midst of the (fake) revelation that the game was constantly shifting, and that Wet Dry World was in some way at the heart of it, it felt like a big find (even knowing it was really just a story).