(After Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem by the same title)                                    

Love is not all. It is not meat nor drink
nor slumber nor a roof against the rain.
In the beauty of sunlight falling on water,    
love is hardly a major factor.                                          
It cannot stop a bullet
or lift a crashing plane
-- or make a stopped heart beat again.
Yet people are killing themselves
even as we speak, for lack of love alone.
It may well be under pain of torture,
starving/dying of thirst,
tested by want past resolution's power,
I'd strike a bargain:
a cup of water for a different life,
a life without memory of you and our children;
I'd trade our love for food. It may well be.
I do not think I would.