Wind, Water, Stone

“Wind, Water, Stone” was first published in English in The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz 1957-1987, put together by Paz’s primary English translator, Eliot Weinberger. Paz is arguably the most influential and famous of Mexico’s 20th-century poets, both in terms of his literary and his political contributions. This poem is somewhat different from the hybrid prose/poetry works for which Paz is most famous because it instead experiments with a minimalist approach to poetry and nature. Dedicated to French intellectual Roger Caillois, the poem is deceptively simple, communicating largely in short repeated lines. However, the dedication serves as a clue to the wider intellectual themes and interests subtly at work in the text.

Poet Biography

Octavio Paz, poet and essayist, was born on March 31, 1914 in Mexico City. The Mexican Civil War caused the financial ruin of Paz’s family, but he thankfully had access to his grandfather’s expansive library, which fueled Paz’s early interest in literature. His grandfather was a writer and progressive intellectual, while Paz’s parents were supporters of the Mexican popular revolution led by Emiliano Zapata. Paz’s father was a political journalist who also served as Zapata’s assistant. When Zapata was killed and his supporters, known as Zapatistas, were persecuted into exile, Paz’s family left for Los Angeles, where Paz spent some of his childhood. Paz quickly found literary success, publishing his first collection of poems, Luna silvestre (Wild Moon), at the age of 19. While studying law, Paz become increasingly active in both literature and politics, continuing to publish and vocally supporting anti-fascist, Leftist political figures. Throughout his life, Paz remained active in both camps as he traveled and lived around the world. Paz fought against the fascist dictator Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, served as Mexico’s cultural attaché to France and its ambassador to India, held prestigious posts in many of the United States’ ivy league universities, and collected a variety of awards for his literary accomplishments. In 1990, eight years before his death, Paz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. When he passed away on April 19, 1998 in Mexico City, his death was publicly announced by the president of Mexico as a tragedy for the country and for the world.

Poem Text

Paz, Octavio. “Wind, Water, Stone.” 1979. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem’s first stanza describes how each element acts upon the other: “Water hollows stone” (Line 1), “wind scatters water” (Line 2), and “stone stops the wind” (Line 3). Paz concludes the stanza with a reformulation of the title: “Water, wind, stone” (Line 4).

In the second stanza, wind acts upon stone because it “carves” (Line 5) it into a cup that will hold water, which then becomes wind. Paz again concludes this stanza with a shuffling of the words in the poem’s title: “Stone, wind, water” (Line 8).

In the third stanza, “stone keeps still” (Line 11) while the “Wind sings” (Line 9) and “water murmurs” (Line 10). The stanza concludes with the poem’s title: “Wind, water, stone” (Line 12).

In its final stanza, Paz’s poem departs from the formula of the first three stanzas. Instead of making observations about the three elements and their interactions with one another, the concluding stanza reflects on how all are similar. Each of the distinct elements “is another and no other” (Line 13). The three elements have become both more of themselves and blended with all the others. Despite its departure from the formula of the first three stanzas, this quatrain maintains the concluding refrain with a return to its primary interests: “water, stone, wind” (Line 16).