Wind and Water and Stone
For Roger Caillois
Wind and Water and Stone - meaning Summary
Interchange of Elements
Paz’s short lyric explores the fluid interchange among wind, water and stone to suggest unity and transience. Through repeated images of transformation—water hollowing stone, wind shaping both, stone holding water—the poem argues that distinct identities dissolve into one another. The closing lines emphasize impermanence and the failure of names to capture change, presenting natural elements as mutable forms of the same underlying movement and disappearance.
Read Complete AnalysesThe water hollowed the stone, the wind dispersed the water, the stone stopped the wind. Water and wind and stone. The wind sculpted the stone, the stone is a cup of water, the water runs off and is wind. Stone and wind and water. The wind sings in its turnings, the water murmurs as it goes, the motionless stone is quiet. Wind and water and stone. One is the other, and is neither: among their empty names they pass and disappear, water and stone and wind.
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