National Poetry Week: 4

Some poems just stay with you, no matter what.

Sea Canes

Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said earth.
No, give them back, as they were, instead,
with faults and all, I cried.

Tonight I can snatch their talk
from the faint surf's drone
through the canes, but I cannot walk

on the moonlit leaves of ocean
down that white road alone,
or float with the draining motion

of owls leaving earth's load.
O earth, the number of friends you keep
exceeds those left to be loved.

The seacanes by the cliff flash green and silver;
they were the seraph lances of my faith,
but out of what is lost grows something stronger

that has the rational radiance of stone,
enduring moonlight, further than despair,
strong as wind, that through dividing canes

brings those we love before us, as they were,
with faults and all, not nobler, just there.

Derek Walcoff
(Collected Poems, 1948-1984)