Got some time to spend? Pull up a chair. Let me tell you a story.

Here’s how it starts: Yesterday a street poet made me cry.

I had met him twice before, each time paying him 50 cents or a dollar to recite one or two of his poems and then finding myself drawn into a long philosophical conversation with him. The first time we spoke was exactly four years ago yesterday, and I was so struck by the encounter that I emailed several people about it. Here’s what I said then.

The second time we met was last Monday, when I walked past him on my way to the Coop in Harvard Square, and decided it was about time to purchase another poem. That experience was very similar to the first one (he is still selling the same poems…), but this time we discussed only poetry. He recommended a few local poets. I kidded him that I’d need some new work if I was going to be a repeat customer.

And he told me his name, and let me tell him mine, when I explained that this was not our first conversation.

I left that meeting feeling much as I had four years ago, pleased and energized.

So how did he make me cry? Well. Yesterday after work I went to the library in Copley Square to take some photographs of an exhibit there, and as I was walking through the courtyard I noticed him sitting on a bench, reading…

*******

At first I can’t decide whether or not to say hello – but in the end I walk up and bend to him. “Hi, Pete.”

He looks up, considers me, and after a beat nods and closes his eyes, ah, like Ok, I get why you’re standing there, and returns his gaze to his book. I interpret this to mean that he has recognized me, and only wants to finish the sentence he is reading before greeting me. He doesn’t look up again, though, so again I say: “Hi, Pete. I was just –”

Without looking up from the page, he embarks on the following, delivered with gentle confidence: “When a person is suffering from great loneliness I generally recommend studying the Hebrew scriptures, or the Hebrew Bible. I find that there’s something very comforting about that kind of study.”

Since I’m not certain I understand his mental state I wait a moment to see if this train of thought will start to make sense in our current context; alternatively, I have an idea that he has decided to return in a roundabout way to the conversation we were having last time we met. But he continues to talk about the scriptures, and eventually I interrupt him: “I’m sorry. Do you remember me?”

He is surprised. He opens his eyes. Looks at me for a second. A long nod. “You’re… Myra?”

“Meera.”

“Yes, and… hmm, I’m not sure if I remember your last name… it’s…”

I tell him.

“Yes, yes. Here — ” He starts clearing a space next to him on the bench — “Sit down, sit down.”

We recap Friday’s talk a little bit, he asks me if I’ve managed to track down Amy Lowell, a poet whom he’d told me about, and as we’re sort of settling into things I say – as you do – “How are you?”

And believe it or not, this is the beginning of the turn of events that ends in me crying.

But back to the story. I’ve just asked how he is. In response he smiles dryly and tells me that he doesn’t think it’s wise to get too personal, because (here I’m distilling several minutes worth of speech)

a) It’s not really appropriate, and
b) Religion, and the attendant sense of community, are very important to him — and based on our conversation the other day, he doesn’t think it seems important to me.
c) Because religion is so important to him, when he meets someone who feels differently he wonders why it’s not important to them.
d) He doesn’t think there’s much point in becoming friendly or having a relationship with someone who doesn’t think religion is important.

Now, this is in no way a rant on his part. He’s speaking, and continues to speak, in a perfectly pleasant manner (although at some moments he does get a bit more insistent). If I choose, I can easily ignore these points he’s making and return to our conversation about poetry. But now I’m interested. I’m interested in what sort of interaction he thinks is worth having with someone who isn’t religious, and I’m interested in getting him to explain what exactly about religion is so fundamental that he couldn’t possibly share anything of a sense of community with someone who wasn’t religious.

I must be honest. I am interested in trying to get him to admit, if I can, that we are similar in our values and interests, and that to reduce things to the issue of religion is to miss the point.

You should also know that in no point in the conversation do I actually come out and say whether or not I am religious. I want to engage with him in an intellectual way, and in my mind I am having a conversation that is a bit philosophical – a bit playful.

(By the way, early in the conversation, when I am still feeling curious and sort of playful, I ask, “Do you always recommend the Hebrew scriptures when people say hello?”

He almost chuckles at this. Since there are many opportunities in the city for interacting with other people around specific activities, when a person starts talking to someone else “out of the blue,” it seems a bit strange. Although I had more of a reason to approach him, usually when someone comes up to him like that to start a conversation, the only reason he can think of to explain it is that they must be deeply lonely.

In retrospect I should have seen this as a sign that he tends to begin his interactions with people armed with a set of assumptions about them and their motives that can be skewed.)

Anyway, I’m setting out to “prove” that whether or not a person is religious doesn’t necessarily determine what they value, how they live their life, and the kinds of decisions they make, so I keep asking him, in different ways, to explain what qualities a religious person has that a nonbeliever can’t also possess.

It’s difficult work, because it’s so clear in his mind that he talks in circles. He keeps talking about community, and morality, and politics. He keeps talking about relationships and how a person lives. I keep pressing him, trying to make it clear that I don’t think any of those things are the domain of a religious person alone.

Eventually I tell him, “For instance, I consider myself a person who cares very much about politics, and ethics, and morality, and community, and relationships with other people. Those things are very important in my life. I’m not sure I understand why you think they’re somehow inseparable from religion.”

He smiles indulgently. “Well. You may consider that these things are important to you, but…”

Around here I begin to feel my pulse quickening, because even though I still sort of can’t believe anyone (anyone who loves poetry!) could really feel this way, I am starting to understand his meaning.

At one point he starts to talk about how impossible it would be for someone who believes in the laws of the United States to communicate with someone who believes in the laws of Nazi Germany. He brings up the conflict in Northern Ireland and suggests that it would be facile to claim that just because they’re both Christians, Irish Catholics and Protestants are the same, when all they want is to kill each other.

I am astounded, because his meaning is clear: We two are different from each other in this way. You are different from me in some way that creates a gulf between us as wide as the one between an American democrat and a Nazi. (And I’m going to guess he doesn’t think of himself as the Nazi part of the equation.)

Here comes my favorite part of the conversation. “It doesn’t mean I think of you as subhuman, or a pariah.” (Gee, thanks.) “But it does mean that I have a sort of… I consider our interaction sort of neutral, whereas there’s another kind of interaction which is positive, one that comes from a sense of community, and shared values, and working together for a common goal, and that’s very different. Two people may have a conversation, and treat each other decently as human beings, and… but…that can only happen in a very, sort of, superficial way, or they may communicate and relate to each other on a much deeper level, and it seems to me that you are a person who prefers this kind of… superficial interaction with others. (Because I asked you how you were? )

It’s not long after this that I find myself, my heart racing and crazily close to tears, realizing that I can’t continue to have this conversation without crying. I interrupt him to say, “I think it’s a bit presumptuous of you to tell me what is and isn’t important to me, and I think it’s incredibly presumptuous of you to tell me why I sat down here to talk to you.” And I reach for my bag.

As I pick it up and stumble to my feet, concentrating on not breaking into a sob, he calls after me.

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. There’s a certain logic — ”

I think he’s about to say there’s a certain logic that I lack (earlier, he told me that the way I responded to something he said was “not logical, or reasonable”), but when I don’t turn around he falls silent. After a step I look back at him, my throat tight.

He’s gone back to his book. It’s as if I had never said hello.

*******

I can’t explain exactly why all this affected me so emotionally; why I was still kind of shaken and teary when I met Jo (and Jo) for drunken singing at An Tua Nua half an hour later, or why I feel the need to write about it in such detail. But I can tell you that, paradoxically, I feel better about the encounter I had with Pete yesterday than the one I had with him five years ago, when I wrote about him as if I had just had a dream: a misty, romanticized vision of a homeless man making a living by reading poetry on the streets; a grubby urban philosopher. I prefer our powerful disagreement, his surprising obstinacy, my hurt feelings, all of that, to the picture I had in my mind of him before. I prefer knowing that we had a passionate clash of beliefs, and that I saw something of who he really is. Even if I didn’t like it.

It makes me sad, though. Because for me it was an encounter that was difficult, fascinating, and enlightening; for him, one that only confirms what he already thinks he knows.