Except for love everything
can be bought. Can be stolen,
snatched, bullied, asked for nicely.
Dear, you can even be converted to Buddhism,
changed from a man into a woman or just into drag.
A hag can turn into a ravishing beauty,
an old lady knock off half a dozen years,
a black become white, or a citizen of Siberia
black, wandering through Africa.
Babies can be made in test-tubes, in the blink of an eye,
New York be reduced to dust, men fly to Mars.
Except for love
in every act of will greater than the will of fate,
the baritone sings countertenor.
Except for love and death and, okay, talent
everything’s in our control. Win the battle
or fall under the foeman’s blow,
but neither give up nor take the alien outpost Il Ove.
Translated by J. Kates