Where do you get your definition for POD from?
From
man perlsyn:
PODs: Embedded Documentation
Perl has a mechanism for intermixing documentation with source code.
While it's expecting the beginning of a new statement, if the compiler
encounters a line that begins with an equal sign and a word, like this
=head1 Here There Be Pods!
Then that text and all remaining text up through and including a line
beginning with "=cut" will be ignored. The format of the intervening
text is described in perlpod.
Perl and POD are two different languages which can be intermingled somehow.
But in the snippet the OP gives, there's nothing intermingled. There's just Perl code.
And the Perl-parser doesn't know much about POD-syntax
I'm not claiming it does, or should be doing. But Perl does have to know where a POD section starts, and where it ends. And it knows where a POD section starts a lot better than any POD parser.