Classic Poem

I want to pay my bill to you:
I dont care who you are, for great or small, I want to pay to you:
That debt of ages, that debt of my own few days, that debt of quenchless love:
I want to pay it to you: to you who are in rags, to you who are discredited:
To you who are lost in the crowd, to you who are not a master but a majority:
I, owing so much, having so little with which to pay what I owe:
I, doing my best to show that I acknowledge you: I, digging in the ground for you:
I come to you not as one of the few but as one of all: not as one of the famous but as one of the unknown:
I with my arms empty but my heart full being able to offer you nothing but myself:
Offering you nothing but myself but offering you the whole of myself: until all is gone offering you all of that: the whole of myself:
Paying what I can on account, paying from day to day, bit by bit:
Never hoping to catch up with your good will yet struggling on with undiminished ardor:
I who can hardly commence to settle with you who have never paused in giving:
Taking my fill of the general sunshine: sharing the fund of common light:
Turning away from the saviors to you: to you, who plant and starve: answering alone to you:
Bad or good as they call you, answering alone to you: dirty or clean as they call you: to you, to you:
Out of my vision answering: out of my puzzled senses: answering alone to you.

You have never presented a bill to me but I have presented a bill to myself:
And although you do not tell me what I owe you I tell myself what I owe you:
And although you never act as though I was unfilial yet I know you are my father my mother self:
And I swear that I'm going to pay you if it's in me to pay you—pay you all for all:
And I know that if I do not pay after trying to pay you will not feel sore on me:
And I understand anyhow that you are too big to care one way or the other about that:
For the peril is for me in not paying, the peril is not for you in not being paid:
The main thing is that we are one affair and cant divide ourselves,
And that what you give so lavishly I have got to give back somewhere in as full measure,
And that you who went without meals for me and died in battles for me way off somewhere—
That this brings you next to today and now and makes me contemporary with your time.
There would be no way to cut loose if I wanted to cut loose:
But I dont want to cut loose: I want you all, you floating nameless crowds:
I pass into the streets: into the stream of your mortal life: it is my stream:
And there is no beautiful or ugly to me there: all is one thing above beauty and ugliness:
And when I see your sad faces I cant help feeling that you are sad for me,
And when I see your maimed bodies I cant help feeling that you are hurt for me,
And when I see your half lives I cant help feeling as if I someway had robbed you of the other half,
And when I see your stunted brains I cant help feeling as if I had stood between you and the sunlight:
Which all goes to show me not that I am any worse than anyone else but that I am not any better than anyone else,
And that eating another man's food does not make me healthier than he is,
And that being in another man's house or wearing his clothes does not keep me any warmer in winter than he is:
For every eye I look into haunts me: makes me see that I have a bill to pay:
And every injustice I see haunts me: makes me see that I have a bill to pay:
And although those who are broken and lost slink out of my path,
And although those who are damned while I am saved hide themselves in alleys and hovels,
I know well enough that I am the one to sneak away and hide and confess—
That if I was what I ought to be they could stand proudly out in the unshaming day,
That if I was what I ought to be they would know that they had paid in full and I was yet to pay:
That if I was what I ought to be they would be what they are instead of what they are not.

The girl on the street came up to me: what do I owe you? she asked:
Darling, you owe me nothing: I owe you: you have paid in full:
And I went to the jails: what did the jail owe me? the jail asked:
O you innocent prisoners, you owe me nothing: I owe you: you have paid in full:
And I visited the mills and the stores: what did the mills and the stores owe me? they asked:
O you crowding creators, you only gods and masters, you owe me nothing; I owe you: you have paid in full: ages ago you paid in full:
And a tramp asked me on the road for a nickel: thank you sir, the tramp said: his gratitude scared me:
O my derelict brother, you owe me nothing: I owe you: you have paid in full:
And a loafer came reeling up to me, soaked with rum: what did the drunk owe me? he asked:
O my masked god: do you think I cant see through your disguise? you owe me nothing: I owe you: you have paid in full:
And the artist who failed turned his picture against the wall: what did his failure owe me? the artist asked:
O my comrade, your failure owes success nothing: success owes you: you have paid in full:
And that is the way it is: wherever I look I dont see what is owing me but what I owe:
And that is the way it is: I cant think of the good I do people, I keep thinking of the good they do me:
And that is the way it is: I go about everywhere choked: I cant say what is in me to say:
When I look at those who are wretched I cant say what is in me to say:
When I see how they have carried crosses for me, I cant say what is in me to say:
I can only stumble out a few words of entreaty and for the rest be still:
I can only reach out a hand to their hands, the living and the dead, and for the rest be still.

Dears, all of you, all you fools, slaves, criminals, prostitutes, outlaws, failures, drunkards:
Dears, all of you, you who are personally forgotten in the remembered total:
Listen to me: you owe me nothing: I owe you everything: everything I have or can get:
Listen to me: I change skins with you: you now are clean and I am rotten: that is all there is to it:
Listen to me: you have offended: you could not help yourselves: the too strong current swept you down:
Listen to me: you have paid in full: being what you are is pay: is pay in full and more than pay:
Listen to me: but I—I have yet to pay: being what I am I have yet to pay: to pay in full and more than pay:
Listen to me: and so I who was always close to you draw closer till no one can again tell us one from the other:
Listen to me: I pay no bill to the virtuous and the gifted and the rich: no: I pay my bill to you: I owe no one else:
Listen, dears: I want to pay my bill to you.