The Rockport Transfer Station, Sept-Dec, 2010

At the Transfer Station

At the transfer station, life begins again.

The old becomes new. This is the truth.

It’s like Isaiah, the old Hebrew prophet, telling the redemptive story:

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth.”

Well, the Israelites couldn’t see it.

They had in mind just what they wanted

and they didn’t want anything else.

Maybe God had in mind messiah, salvation.

Maybe God had in mind better priests, more faithful people.

Maybe the unification of the twelve tribes, a decent king—

who knew?

Because the people wanted the IKEA shelving,

some good cable TV,  a sense of entitlement and election.

They wanted a convenient life.

Though the truth is, life had never been convenient—

--slaving for the Egyptians, wandering in the desert,

hearing Moses’s over-long sermons and eating

manna, which was like some pre-vegan version

of kale.

We’re not different. Or truly keen on kale.

But it’s different at the transfer station.

Here, you have some choices.

First, you ditch your garbage in the appointed

mausoleums: paper, here; plastic, there;

glass and cans in the farthest ones.

You stash your empty receptacles back in the car;

now you are light, you are shriven.

Now it’s time to visit the transfer station

shops, one for junk, one for books.

Maybe there’s a snowboard at the junk shop,

but you don’t snowboard, so you don’t take it.

Maybe there’s a bedspring and you and your

spouse have broken yours—maybe you’re both too fat,

or maybe you fucked too much. Anyway, it’s broken.

Load the bedspring on the top of the car.

Hallow your new bed. Have a fond fuck.

Or a good lie-in.

Now visit the transfer station book shop.

You are in the market for some dog-earred Rilke, that German mystic poet who made you believe

in whatever you had to believe in, whenever that was.
This from the Second Elegy:

“Every angel is terrifying.”

Well, duh! “What does this mean?”

as Luther asks, ad nauseum, in the Small Catechism.

It means, Martin, that every angel is terrifying.

Maybe not Clarence, in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

But the rest of them.

So fortunately--so as not to fulfill your own agenda--

You do not find any Rilke at the transfer station.

What do you find? Well, you don’t find much.

Just books that smell, books that have somebody

else’s handwriting in them—an inscription for a

birthday present long since discarded, notes

from a college class, something about Yeats

or atomic weight or a French cognate.You don't find much.

Though still you manage to leave the transfer station

with a full bag. Books you figure you

won’t read, don’t need. Books that leapt,

like fish, into your bag.  You will bring them back,

you say, next time you come. And you come often

because you’re not living here for long,

near the transfer station, where every week,

it’s always something new.  You’ve only got

a few months, living near the transfer station.

And you want to leave here lighter than when you came.

You take your bag of books back with you

to your temporary home. And what do you find?

Leonard Cohen’s Psalms?
One ofThe  Boxcar Children’s books?
A writer you hate
whose book you are happy to find among the discards?

Only, there are no discards. There is only the transfer station

where God—surely jesting—fulfills Isaiah’s earnest asking:

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth,

do you not perceive it?”

Fool that I am, I don’t. Fool that I am, I do.

Faith Comes From What is Heard

Okay, so there are two poems I can no longer bear to read aloud. One I used to read at the end of yoga classes sometimes. It's by Rainer Maria Rilke, that overly-sensitive 19th-century German poet I'm somehow kin to, I guess. And the other I used to read around All Saints' Day at the evening alternative service when I was a parish pastor. That one is by Robinson Jeffers, an under-valued, mid-twentieth-century treasure of a poet.

Now my voice breaks when I try to read them. So read them aloud for me. It's worthwhile work.

Here's the Rilke. It's probably not even a good translation. I wouldn't know the difference. Still, it makes me cry. Do join in:

God speaks to each of us as God makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall;

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like a flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

                                      

You want to read the other one, too? (You do, you do.) It's more of a love poem. Here it is, thanks to Robinson Jeffers:

Blue Gentians

       Cremation 


       It nearly cancels my fear of death, my dearest said,
       when I think of cremation. To rot in the earth
       is a loathsome end, but to roar up in flame--
       besides, I am used to it,
       I have flamed with love or fury so often in my life.
       No wonder my body is tired, no wonder it is dying.
       We had great joy of my body. Scatter the ashes.



So what is making me so weepy?

Well, tomorrow night I'm going to hear a performance of the Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony. Anybody who has seen the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy screwball comedy, "Adam's Rib," might remember that the love interest/composer pens a little love-ditty to Hepburn called "Farewell, Amanda," outright stealing Tchaikovsky's main motif from his 5th. And yet, watch the film, you'll laugh; hear the symphony, you'll cry. Who says two things can't be true? Only damn fools. Ignore them.

(And don't forget to read the poems aloud. That's all for now!) 

That is, unless you want to listen up: