Wind, Water, Stone

“Wind, Water, Stone” begins with a pattern recalling the game rock-paper-scissors, juxtaposing each of the three titular elements with another and demonstrating how one of each pair acts upon the other. In the first line, water “hollows stone” (Line 1)—though it is “scatter[ed]” (Line 2) by wind in its turn. Finally, “stone stops the wind” (Line 3).

The first two lines illustrate actions that transform or move their respective elements: Stone is “hollow[ed]” (Line 1) and water is “scatter[ed]” (Line 2). While each is certainly disturbed, they are also propagated and shifted—stone is reshaped, water is displaced. Unlike these two actions, stone utterly “stops the wind” (Line 3). This action is tantamount to annihilation; a stopped wind is wind no longer. Just as this disturbing difference manifests itself in the poem, the stanza returns to a soothing sameness that mimics a mantra: “Water, wind, stone” (Line 4).

The second stanza’s first line echoes the previous stanza’s; however, it is now wind, not water, that “carves stone” (Line 5). The next line introduces a metaphor as the stone is now “a cup of water” (Line 6). The stone has already been hollowed and carved, thus it has been shaped into a cup for water. However, the “of” could also suggest that stone is not merely a receptacle for, but is itself, water. Here, rather than acting upon one another, the elements begin to transform into one another.

After this, the poem transitions to another variation on its theme. The third line of the stanza contains two verbs: Water both “escapes and is wind” (Line 7). After stone becomes “a cup of water” (Line 6), the “water escapes” (Line 7). Instead of returning to itself, water uses its newfound freedom to “[be] wind” (Line 7), which could also refer to evaporation. In this sense, the water escapes itself and “is” wind insofar as it becomes water vapor in the air. With only a few variations on the pattern he establishes in the first stanza, Paz creates a complex reflection on identity and transformation in the poem’s second stanza.

The third quatrain departs from the elemental pairings in each line, instead devoting each of its first three lines to only one of the poem’s natural nouns. Instead of each element acting upon another, here the elements act only on and within themselves. Paz describes the wind as “sing[ing] in its whirling” (Line 9). The first verb of the line, “sings” (Line 9), attributes human qualities to the water, metaphorically giving it sentience. The following line does the same for water, which “murmurs going by” (Line 10). Both lines show a passive activity for their element—wind has “its whirling” (Line 9), water has its “going by” (Line 10)—but add an active response by that element to their natural state (singing and murmuring, respectively).

With minor adjustments to the minimalist, repetitive poetic form he establishes, Paz illustrates an animistic nature that enjoys its own processes and sings the pleasures of its own inherent qualities. Even motionless and seemingly lifeless stone receives the same treatment, which is described as inherently “unmoving” but also must contribute its own impetus as it “keeps still” (Line 11). After anthropomorphizing its subjects, the quatrain concludes with the order of elements identical to the title and even follows its own stanzaic order of introduction, despite the other stanzas using different orders for their lines and their concluding list: “Wind, water, stone” (Line 12).

Typical of the measured, plodding tempo that Paz establishes, the poem’s conclusion turns from description to statement. The final quatrain leaves behind the pattern of lines dominated by the alternating sequence of elements to wrap up the poem with a straightforward declaration of meaning: “Each” of the poem’s elements “is another and no other” (Line 13). The poem then describes how this simultaneous identity, coidentity, and nonidentity is possible. Its explanation for the coexistence of these seemingly incompatible states is that each of the elements is “crossing and vanishing / through their empty names” (Lines 14-15).

The emphasis on names might seem puzzling after the poem spends most of its time describing actions. On a first read, the stanzas do describe the elements “crossing and vanishing” (Line 14), but they seem to be doing so with one another, not with their names. Following the emphasis on the shifting of the elements through their “empty names” (Line 15), the once-familiar listing—“water, stone, wind” (Line 16)—becomes revelatory. Here, the poem reveals that the chant-like repetition of the elements was not so much about the elements themselves but instead focused on highlighting their linguistic nature. The names of each element create an identity for the element, an identity which is not reflective of their “crossing and vanishing” (Line 14) existence in nature.