sea canes

Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said earth.
No, give me 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 dreaming motion

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

The sea canes 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 the wind, that through dividing canes

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


Derek Walcott



Somehow the second half, though admittedly beautiful (oh the words... *swoon*), doesn't quite ring true. For one thing, the 'something stronger' that is gained from the speaker's loss and grief is never really identified - the abstraction of 'rational radiance', 'enduring moonlight' etc just doesn't cut it for me. It might have worked if not for the first half of the poem, which makes the loss seem too real to be redeemed by vague airy notions of spirit-conjuring sea canes.

Hmm.

It's still a beautiful poem nonetheless. The only problem is that it doesn't quite make sense.
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