down that white road

Today I went to see Furious 7. It was wonderful, and then the last ten minutes made me cry my eyes out, which is more or less what I expected. As it turns out, trying to find a poem that in any way encapsulates my feelings about the Fast and the Furious franchise is pretty much impossible, so here is a painful and gorgeous Derek Walcott poem about dead friends, instead.

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 (b. 1930), "Sea Canes," from Sea Grapes, 1971/1976. I went to the Strand after the movie and bought a whole new edition of Derek Walcott poems, and still I only ever seem to post poems from Sea Grapes. Admittedly, it is a pretty phenomenal collection.