Except for love everything
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
Page(s) 199
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The