Classic Poem

You knew me when I came to you:
After all the others had turned me down, after the darkness had set in:
You knew me: you came along in your simple sweet way and said: Hello!
I felt as if somehow I had gone to God and God had said: Brother!
It did not seem as if anything else mattered after you said: Hello! and after God said: Brother!
I did not look farther: I felt filled full and choked with my simple excess:
You did not make any fuss over me: your arms were wide open, your heart was wide open: I just slipped in:
First you stood aloof: just a little: just long enough to give you time to see through my veiling corruptions and griefs to me:
I waited: oh! the agony of it: I waited: what if you too had said: I dont know you?
But the smile came out on your face: like a sun came out: the assenting invitation: like a sun came out:
Then I knew you knew me: O God! you knew me! your arms reached, reached, reached, and included me.

I went to God, footsore and lonely, out of my battles, whipped, in dishonor:
O God! dont you know me? my cry went up, up, piercing severing the clouds:
And out of the distance, after I waited and trembled and was about to slink away, I heard the voice: the voice said: Brother!

The soldier came home after the long war:
He was dust stained, his beard was grown and gray, his face was haggard and worn:
His cause was the lost cause — lost in the world though not lost in his heart:
He came on heavy feet: he rang the bell at the door and waited:
The door opened: the mother, the wife, the lover, stood there, wondering, half afraid:
The man looked in, looked into her questioning face: she gazed and gazed and said nothing:
Then his heart in its agony cried out: his heart in his sobbing voice: O God! dont you know me?
The woman did not need to look again: the light broke: she opened her arms: she received and welcomed and enclosed him:
The sad sick soldier after the long war, the lost cause, the trip afoot for many miles:
She knew him, she grappled him madly to her hungering and thirsting body: the lovers were together again at last:
And so in the silences silent themselves needing no words they drank life from each other: their bodies, their souls:
O God! dont you know me? and she knew him: he was not turned away: he had no farther to go.

O adored one: you: you, my lover, my comrade, my mother, my child:
O God! dont you know me? cant you recognize me through my scars?
I have met life and been thrown by life: I have met love and been thrown by love:
In the furious give and take of the earth I have sinned and fallen and seemed lost for good:
Now I come to you: creep to you on my hands and knees: empty, with nothing to bring you:
Now I cry to you out of my broken heart: I have lost all: all but my love: I have kept my love:
O God! dont you know me? and I sink in the dirt and gloom before you, asking, asking:
And what do you say to me, O adored one? that I am to stay or to go on?
And what do you say to me, O adored one? will you lift me up or am I to slip farther down and disappear?
O God! dont you know me? O God! dont you know me?
The tide goes by, the crowds go by, the hours go by: I wait, I wait, I wait.

And there you found me, O adored one: by the gate you found me, in the storm and cold:
You found me just where they had flung me, rejecting me from their assemblage:
And you lifted me up, you took me with you, somewhere, I dont know where:
And you gave me yourself: you breathed love into me out of your plenteous joy:
And I came around: when I awoke I was nestled in your arms: you smiled on me:
My head was on your breast: you had held me close, close, till I had been won back to life:
The others had said no: you had said yes: they saw nothing: you saw all:
And so you took me: I was yours: and when the others came you shrank from them:
You were jealous of this miracle you had done: you pushed the intruders away:
What were they to me, to come at dawn with praises after you had saved me through the impossible midnight?
And so it was that after you said: Hello! and God said: Brother! I did not seem to want anything more:
Anything more would have overfilled my cup: I was satisfied with hello and brother: they gave me great peace:
You knew me without being told who I was: through the obstructing shell knew me:
You stood there looking at me: O God! dont you know me? and the radiant yes broke into your face and spilled from your lips:
And so I was saved: from the long war, saved: from the lost cause, saved:
You knew me when I came to you.