A Friendship Like No Other
My dear old friend comes to greet me once again
Sometimes distant but never far
My oldest friend
My constant companion
Once was I told with age comes loneliness
However I am never alone
Through every failure, every loss
Even the supposed happiest moments of my existence
My oldest friend has never left my side
Although in vain I have tried to outgrow my oldest friend
Never have I shaken them
They have held my hand in every stage of life
Slowly morphing me in their image
Now at the end of my existence I can hardly tell the difference
Between them and me
In the poem I wrote, I did not analyze the painting at face value or simply describe what I saw in the painting. When I looked at this painting of this man, I saw a man towards the end of his life that had been beaten and broken down by a lifetime of sadness and depression. This is what I wrote my poem about. I wrote my poem as the man in the poem speaking of his depression as a lifelong friend who has never left his side. I focused on the art more than I did the artist. However, I don’t know why Vincent van Gogh painted this work of art specifically. Perhaps maybe the old man in the painting is supposed to be van Gogh himself. I broke the lines in the poem where I did in order to continue the flow and cadence of the poem. I also made the lines short on purpose for ease of the reader. I used the word friend multiple times in this poem in reference to depression. The words friend and depression clearly convey very different meanings. However, for everyone who either has depression or knows someone that does, the use of both of them in the same vein makes sense in a way. I wanted to create a very contrasting juxtaposition with the idea of depression and friendship.