Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
Water, wind, stone.
Wind carves stone,
stone’s a cup of water,
water escapes and is wind.
Stone, wind, water.
Wind sings in its whirling,
water murmurs going by,
unmoving stone keeps still.
Wind, water, stone.
Each is another and no other:
crossing and vanishing
through their empty names:
water, stone, wind.
Octavio Paz, "Wind, Water, Stone”, The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987.
A brown musically moving beauty, the earth’s fullness
Slides towards the sea. An escape
Of earth-serpent, with all its hoards, casting the land, like an old skin,
Pulling its body from under the eye.
Ted Hughes, Fairy Flood (River), 1983