Marble smooth by flowing waters grown

From the quote by Pound that makes up the title (from this line only, and not from the fragments to which it belongs) came the idea for this piece. From what in this verse is disposed as opposite phonetic plans: one of them around the “smoothness” of the surface of the rock; the other, about the image of its origin in the water flow. Those extreme opposites as states of matter (in their gradations of hardness and viscosity) and in their tactility are joined around the rock that was named, by all accounts, by its tendency to sparkle, from Greek to Latin. And a Latin dictionary in hand indicates the same association by other means, in the image of a marmorean ocean in the shining of its white foam, in the Æneid:

 

“Now morning flushed the wave, and saffron-garbed

Aurora from her rose-red chariot beamed

in highest heaven; the sea-winds ceased to stir;

a sudden calm possessed the air, and tides

of marble smoothness met the laboring oar.”