Classic Poem

What do I mean to you, O woman, O man?
It means much to me, what I mean to you:
It means most to me what I am to myself, but it means no small thing to me what I am to you:
And if I mean anything good to myself that does not mean good equally to you,
And if I lose the fertile meanings of all in the sterile meanings of one,
Then I miss the main point: then my soul goes begging: then I am without excuse:
For the strength of a man and the excuse of a man is in his meanings:
And the meanings of a man are not the meanings of his value to himself but of his value to the crowd:
At least, that's the way the whole matter looks to me: that's the way:
And so I ask questions of my soul and ask questions of you, O woman, O man:
And much depends upon what I answer, what you answer: much and all:
In the days when things go right or wrong, much depends: in victory or defeat, much and all depends and must depend everywhere and always.

What do I mean to you, O woman?
I am the key and I unlock you: I mean the key to you, O woman:
I have thought that the key to a woman is a man and could be nothing else:
I have thought that the key to a man is a woman and could be nothing else:
Perhaps a certain woman or a certain man: perhaps you or me:
Perhaps there is one key or perhaps there are many keys: woman or women, man or men:
I have felt jubilant like the opener of life — like the mouth-piece of sex and emancipation:
As if, O woman, I had led you to the edge of a new world and left you there to go in or to turn back as you freely chose:
I dont know how it comes about: I cant explain it at all: I dont feel guilty or innocent: but that's how it seems to me
How does it seem to you, O woman? — do you turn back or do you pass joyfully over, O woman?
What do I bring you, O woman, in my full arms, in my full heart?
Is it something you want to throw away or something you want to keep?
I say to you, O you one woman of all woman — you woman complete of my incomplete soul and body:
I am the key to you: I unlock you: you go free from this minute:
I alone make you free — I alone am competent: now you will know what I mean, what love means, what life means, what you yourself mean:
I have turned the key in the lock: the prisoner passes out ecstatically to the light of day:
I have turned the key in the lock: the prisoner is reprieved — my beloved — the woman: you, O complete woman:
I who deliver being also delivered: I who give also taking: I who waive all debts also going free of debt.

What do I mean to you, O man?
Do I stand hidden behind phrases passing pretty compliments that lead nowhere?
Or am I found in your midst with a helping hand going where you go?
When you see love at work in the world are you reminded of me?
When your little hope grows suddenly big in the increasing light do you think of my prophecy?
When some joy you never knew before leaps in your blood do you repeat my name?
When justice comes to take the place of injustice, the friend taking the place of the enemy, am I visible to you?
Much depends upon that, O man: much and all: victory or defeat:
For nothing however glorious is victory if it fails to take you along, with it:
And nothing however sorrowful is defeat if it includes and is fair to you
I see so well that the vastness of the universe is not in endless space and the stars but in their meanings:
I see so well that my measure is not in my body or in my soul but in my meanings:
And for that reason, O man, I stand before you acquitted or convicted,
And you will sentence me to life or sentence me to death according as my meanings mean life or death to you:
There is no other way in or out: according as my meanings mean life or death to you, O man!

I wander on abandoned feet: I go far east or west: I disappear in vanishing distances:
I get out of the horizon of the people: I pass into oblivion: I try to escape my memories:
But I have seen the crowd: I have looked it in the face: I can no longer refuse its cry:
The fear that drove me away drags me back: the voice that banished me recalls me:
So here I am again, in the streets, in the alleys, choked in the stormy stream:
My meanings were not removed somewhere, in the woods, on the shore, where good luck forgets:
My meanings were right here, in the town, where the poor suffer and die, where bad luck remembers:
My meanings are not in the elegant enemic sayso of books but in the virile vile give and take of the struggle:
I have tried to drown my sorrows in words: I have turned my sorrows over to art and the dictionary:
But my sorrows are not less keen: they dog my steps: they forestall my baffled will:
Nothing in the swing and the certainty of the earth is efficient but love, O woman, O man!
Words are not efficient, pictures and music are not efficient: love alone is efficient:
And so, O woman, O man, you will take my love and untangle its meanings:
And you will set me up or down not because the prosperous and the flattered of the earth take off their hats and their shoes to me:
You will set me up or down because the poor and the failures of the earth understand my brother meanings and keep me close by.

What do I mean to you, O woman, O man?
Take me aside with you — take me with you to some place where you are nearest your own meanings:
Do not judge me by what I wear, not even by what I say: judge me by what I stir up in you:
By what I stir up in your body when your body is nearest giving the body its due:
By what I stir up in your soul when your soul is nearest giving the soul its due:
By what I stir up in your hushed dreams which you never have dared tell to any confessor:
I stand before you, O woman, O man, to be judged — to have my meanings passed upon: to be sentenced to life or death:
What do I mean to you, O woman, O man?