This is a poem about friends—and all their maddening changeability, about the weird experience of watching them find themselves or lose their minds.

Even more, though, it’s a poem about friendship itself.

In his gorgeous little essay titled “Friendship”, the poet David Whyte writes that “friendship is a moving frontier of understanding, not only of the self and the other but also of a possible and as yet unlived future” and that “a diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble”.

There is a lot of that in this poem by Christian Wiman, an American poet, translator, editor, and essayist, who was editor of Poetry magazine for 10 years until 2013.

Wiman is, in a way, a poet for the masses. He is the opposite of the style of complex symbolism that we might find in WB Yeats or John Keats. He writes for regular modern people living in regular modern circumstances with all the regular modern problems that brings. In an interview in 2009, he said, “I have no illusions about adding to sophisticated theological thinking. But I think there are a ton of people out there who are what you might call unbelieving believers, people whose consciousness is completely modern and yet who have this strong spiritual hunger in them. I would like to say something helpful to those people.”

Beliefs are at the centre of this poem. What is it that cultivates our beliefs? Why are some of us born-again Christians? Why do some of us leave religion and become fervent atheists? Why do we follow health fads and strict exercise regimens? Who really knows, except maybe there is an emptiness in the heart of every human soul that yearns to be filled. And maybe, as much as anything else, it is friendship itself that can fill it.

You can read the poem here

You can find three poems by David Whyte in the archives of this podcast. “Sometimes” is in Episode 7, “The Bell and the Blackbird” can be found in Episode 38 and “A Seeming Stillness” is in Episode 94.

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