Wind, Water, Stone

The elements wind, water, and stone make up the bulk of the poem’s subject matter, diction, structural patterns, and title. Because the poem is built on a skeletal structure of these words, including (but not limited to) their continual rearrangement as a closing refrain for each stanza, they function as structural motifs. However, they also contain symbolic meaning. In the poem, water “hollows,” “escapes,” and “murmurs” (Lines 1, 7, 10). Wind, on the other hand, “scatters,” “carves,” and “sings” (Lines 2, 5, 9), while stone “stops,” “[is] a cup,” and “keeps still” (Lines 3, 6, 11). Each element is presented in the poem as an embodiment (or symbol) of a certain kind of sensibility. Water is active, gently talkative, and seeks escape; wind freely scatters and sings; and stone remains steadfastly inert. Paz presents the elements to his readers in anthropomorphic terms, demonstrating that their respective essences are inextricably tied with their human-attributed “empty names” (Line 15).

In this way, the three elements also function as symbols of a broader theory presented in the poem. While they serve as examples of how natural forces are given identity and individual essence only through human perception and the categorical work of language, they point in turn to the way this logic extends to all things. Paz’s poem reveals that the basic features of landscape are separate only by means of human perception and categorization, but the poem’s larger suggestion is that all things are individuated only through these artificial means as well. With this reading in mind, each of the three elements acts in part as a symbol for identity as a whole, for individuated linguistic essences in general.