Classic Poem

I'm just talking all the time about love:
I try sometimes to talk of other things but I come back to love:
To my simple love for men and women, to my love for you, to my love for life:
Not caring at all what may be said of me because of it, coming back to love:
From whatever excursion into other fields, where other motives prevail, coming back to love:
Something in my heart driving me: something in you impelling me: something: something:
The casual day not satisfying me: the casual ambitions and rewards:
The being thought a lot of not satisfying me: the fame: the noise of popular approval:
Rather shrinking from that: rather preferring to pass around seeing but remaining unseen:
Putting in my word for love wherever I can: even when it seems out of place or unwelcome:
Just saying love everywhere and everyhow so that all may hear: saying love:
Lowering my voice in the noise so I may be heard in the silences:
Raising my voice in the silences so I may be heard in the noise:
But saying the same thing wherever: saying the same thing: saying love, just love:
Making people mad: appearing at the wrong time: saying love, love, whether they listen or are deaf:
All I write, do, dream, look for, being love: all I work for being love:
Just love: just love: just love.

They ask me: What is this message you bring with such a snow of purpose and joy?
What can I say? I say: Love: and I say: Love: that's all I can say:
And they look at each other and they look at me and they smile: I know what they mean:
And then the priest asks: Why dont you bring religion? you bring only love?
And then the statesman asks: Why dont you bring laws? you bring only love?
And then the singer asks: Why dont you bring us harmonies? you bring only love?
And then the poet asks: Why dont you bring us songs? you bring only love?
And then they all ask: Why dont you bring something else? you bring only love?
And they gather about me: they jeer me: they are like an angry mob:
Why dont I bring them trade and power and conquest? Why dont I? I bring only love:
Why dont I bring them houses and ease and incomes and luxuries? Why dont I? I bring only love:
Why should I bring heaven along with me to interfere with the earth? Why shouldn't I let the earth alone?
Why should I stand in the way of the masters and the leaders and the elect with my senseless call?
What can I say? I say: Love: and I say: Love: that's all I can say:
And there they stand, the best citizens, interposing their indignant denial:
Love? oh! love would be in place for somewhere else but not for here:
Love? oh! love would be in time for some other year but not for today:
And so I am laughed at and hurried out of sight for fear some of the guileless children might see me and be deceived:
And so I am gagged and bound and put into prison for fear some of the dreamers might hear me and be misled:
I, who can bring only love: I, who bring just love: I, who have left everything else behind me and brought just love:
I, who, being asked: what do you bring the need of the world? can only say: just love.

Just love: I bring just love: I talk of nothing else: nothing:
And you joke about it: you smoke your cigars over me and drink your wines:
But it seems to me that no one has ever brought anything else that the world finally cared for but just love:
It seems to me that Jesus brought just love, though you hung him for it, to be sure:
It seems to me that Socrates brought just love, though you made him poison himself for it, to be sure:
It seems to me that all your saints and singers in all time brought you just love, though you sacrificed most of them for it, to be sure:
It seems to me that every man you think worth while way back and all things you think worth while brought just love, though you were at first in a great fury about it, to be sure:
So it is not surprising that you feel sore on me and make it hard for me to endure life:
You look up at the walls of your houses and your galleries of art and everywhere see the faces of those who brought just love, to be sure:
But you do not learn from that: you go on rejecting the lovers just the same: maiming, hating, killing the lovers:
You meet me with the old antipathy: I bring just love: love, you say, is just what you dont want:
As if anything in the universe was for anything but just love: as if the trees or the seas were for anything but just love:
As if anything in human life, the feeding, the labor of men, was for anything but just love in the end: just love:
As if anyone could think of anything anywhere in any time that was for anything but just love:
As if your children born out of you or you born out of your mother, O woman, was for anything but just love:
As if even blindness and cruelty and wrong was finally for anything but just love;
As if it could be for anything but just love and be anything at all: as if it could, O my brothers:
As if if it was for anything but just love the whole business would not go to pieces:
As if if it was for anything but just love it could have started at all, or anyone or you or I would ever have emerged from the mysteries into life at all:
As if anything could have gone on or could go on for a minute without just love.

I'm just talking all the time about love:
And maybe I'm nearer the meanings of things than anyone who talks about anything else:
And maybe your laugh at me is out of place: maybe I should be the one to laugh:
And maybe some day you will put my portrait upon your walls and speak well of it after I am dead:
I who go about among you just talking all the time about love.