Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing that makes water,
and nobody knows what that is.
–D. H. Lawrence
.
If you open your eyes,
night opens doors of musk,
the secret kingdom of the water opens
flowing from the center of the night.
And if you close your eyes,
a river fills you from within,
flows forward, darkens you:
night brings its wetness to
beaches in your soul.
—Octavio Paz
Early Poems 1935-1955
Muriel Rukeyser translation
.
The 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.
—Octavio Paz
Translated by Mark Strand
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