<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="c-feature-hd" style="margin: 0px 0px 9px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs<br class=""><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">All my friends are finding new beliefs.</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">This one converts to Catholicism and this one to trees.</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">In a highly literary and hitherto religiously-indifferent Jew</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">God whomps on like a genetic generator.</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">Paleo, Keto, Zone, South Beach, Bourbon.</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">Exercise regimens so extreme she merges with machine.</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">One man marries a woman twenty years younger</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">and twice in one brunch uses the word</span><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class=""> </span><span style="text-indent: -1em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" class="">verdant</span><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">;</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">another’s brick-fisted belligerence gentles</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">into dementia, and one, after a decade of finical feints and teases</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">like a sandpiper at the edge of the sea,</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">decides to die.</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">Priesthoods and beasthoods, sombers and glees,</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">high-styled renunciations and avocations of dirt,</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">sobrieties, satieties, pilgrimages to the very bowels of being ...</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">All my friends are finding new beliefs</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">and I am finding it harder and harder to keep track</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">of the new gods and the new loves,</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">and the old gods and the old loves,</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">and the days have daggers, and the mirrors motives,</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">and the planet’s turning faster and faster in the blackness,</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">and my nights, and my doubts, and my friends,</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class="">my beautiful, credible friends.</span><br class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class="c-feature-hd" style="margin: 0px 0px 9px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Christian Wiman</span></div><div class=""><span style="text-indent: -1em;" class=""><font face="American Typewriter" size="5" class=""><br class=""></font></span></div></div></body></html>