Classic Poem

I Just Give You What I've Got

I just give you what I've got, dear comrades:
The little things here and there of no consequence born of my love:
The words of my heart addressing themselves to you: the plain simple words of my loyal faith:
I have nothing else to give, but I give you that wholly, without asking any questions:
Coming to you with joy, visiting you with confidence, yet sending no boisterous couriers ahead to promise you anything:
You, all of you, to whom I belong: you, all of you, who belong to me: the somebodies, the nobodies:
Trembling sometimes at your threshold, wondering whether you'll let me in at all:
Me, with my few stray obscure belongings, knocking with fear at your door:
Bringing to you what the others may not bring: the proud, the decorated: what they may not bring:
Yet knowing quite well that may be my little gift is not welcome—is too trifling to be taken seriously:
That something, that nothing, out of my slender treasury offering itself to you:
Not on its knees, offering: yet humbly offering: shy about its value: ready to be rejected:
The fruit of the slip I planted as a boy now grown to a man's height:
The fruit of the slip I planted as a boy now grown O God how I hope to a man's worth:
Coming with it to you, in my eyes, in my hands, in my voice, in my soul, coming with it to you:
Submitting it to you: without asking you to take it yet hoping it may answer some need of your struggle:
To you, my comrades: to you: from way off, from the shadows, unknown, to you, to you.

I just go on saying over the same thing, dear comrades:
I have no more than the one thing to say, and that thing is love:
And I say that tirelessly to you so that you hear it wherever you are and whatever you are doing:
I am not versatile, I am not great, I have no standing in the world:
I stay on the ground: I mix up with the crowd: I address you in the plainest way I know:
Keep saying my one word, keep dreaming my one dream: though laughed at, seeing nothing else to do:
Well aware that you resent me: catching you give each other significant discrediting looks when I appear—
When you see me coming run away from me: when you hear me speaking stop your ears:
I understand you: I bring you only the one affair: you are tired of hearing me spell it out:
But I cant get away from it: it haunts me: it fills me with you: fills, overflows me:
It haunts what I tell you of and what I put my hands to and the ground I tread on:
Just love: the love of my heart for you: the love of my heart for the joys I want you to have:
Just love: the love of my heart for you: the love of my heart for the justice I want you to have:
The foolish innocent hunger to be of use to you: the shame-faced thirst to be of use to you:
The resolution to come back eternally with what I have to offer: to take no no as final:
Not sure I am worth while, not sure coming back is worth while, but coming back without fail:
I, without credentials, introduced by no ambassador, suing in your haughty court.

You dont know me? I do not wonder: I dont know myself: I am at a loss about myself:
You ask: who are you? and I shake my head: I look at you and say nothing:
I come to you but I could not tell why: I have something for you but I could not tell what:
Out of me some flower will blossom out of my seedthrow some harvest will come:
That I am sure of but that is all I am sure of: there is more to tell but I cant tell it:
I feel that I am sent to you but I dont know what sent me or what I am sent for:
I say the books did not send me: no—not the noblest books: something more than books:
I say the powers did not send me: no—not the universities nor the rulers nor the singers: something more and more:
I say money and property did not send me: they least of all: no—for they are murderously dumb: something more and more:
I say that only the love of the people sent me: there is nothing more than the love of the people:
And that is the cause why I loaf around among you stammering out my message:
And that is the cause why I have not repeated it with any ornament and brag added but have passed it to you just as I received it:
And that is the cause why the masters will tell you I only speak a slave jargon and must be interpreted:
As if love needed to be interpreted if you gave love half a chance to live.
Now I have said over again what I have said countless times before,
And I dont know how it seems to you but to me it seems as if I was saying it for the first time:
For saying love over never seems like saying love too much: you always listen for it again:
I cant begin to count up the loves I have scattered across the earth and the loves the earth has scattered across me:
And I never saw that love did any harm anywhere or was complained about O my brothers when you understood it:
For that's about all life comes to anyhow—comes to the love we can put into it:
I just give you what I've got, dear comrades.Englishlove poemlove poemslove poems for herlove poetrypoems about loveromantic poems