A poem by Alan Dugan
She said: “I’m god and all
of this and that world and love
garbage and slaughter all the time
and spring once a year. Once a year
I like to love. You can adjust
to the discipline or not,
and your sacrificial act
called ‘Fruitfulness in Decay’
would be pleasing to me
as long as you did it with joy.
Otherwise, the prayer ‘Decay,
Ripe in the Fruitfulness’
will do if you have to despair.”
Prayer
You know that girl of yours
I liked? The one with strong legs,
grey eyes, weak in the chest
but always bouncing around?
The one they call “The Laugh,”
“The Walk,” “That Cunt,” “The Brain,”
“Talker, Talker, Talker,” and
“The Iron Woman”? Well,
she’s gone, gone gone, gone
gone gone to someone else,
and now they say that she,
“My Good,” “My True,” “My Beautiful,”
is sick to her god-damned
stomach and rejects all
medication. What do you do
to your physical praisers that
they fall apart so fast
or leave me? She needs help now,
yours or that prick’s,
I don’t know which.
“I have worked out
my best in belief
of the rule, ‘The best
for the best results
in love of the best,’
or, ‘To hell with it:
I am just god:
it’s not my problem.”‘
I will sit out this passion
unreconciled, thanks: there are
too many voices. My visions
are not causal but final:
there’s no place to go to
but on. I’ll dance at the ends
of the white strings of nerves
and love for a while, your slave.
Oh stupid condition, I drink
to your Presences in hope of sleep
asleep, and continuity awake.
A few random poems:
- To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time by William Butler Yeats
- A Tree Song by Rudyard Kipling
- In Imitation of Cowley : The Garden poem – Alexander Pope
- Шекспир – Проснись, любовь – Сонет 56
- Women’s Harvest Song poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- last_word_to_childhood.html
- The Soldier poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Schoolroom On A Wet Afternoon by Vernon Scannell
- Nay Not To Night
- Storm-Racked poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- La Vie Boheme poem – Ysabelle Moriarty poems | Poetry Monster
- Journey Of Life by Nikhil Srinivas
- An Opera House poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Gardener XIII: I Asked Nothing by Rabindranath Tagore
- Stanzas Written In My Pocket Copy Of Thomson’s “Castle Of Indolence” by William Wordsworth
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- The Old Stone Cross by William Butler Yeats
- The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water by William Butler Yeats
- The Old Age Of Queen Maeve by William Butler Yeats
- The Nineteenth Century And After by William Butler Yeats
- The New Faces by William Butler Yeats
- The Municipal Gallery Revisited by William Butler Yeats
- The Mountain Tomb by William Butler Yeats
- The Mother Of God by William Butler Yeats
- The Moods by William Butler Yeats
- The Meditation Of The Old Fisherman by William Butler Yeats
- The Mask by William Butler Yeats
- The Man Who Dreamed Of Faeryland by William Butler Yeats
- The Magi by William Butler Yeats
- The Madness Of King Goll by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover’s Song by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His Heart by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover Asks Forgiveness Because Of His Many Moods by William Butler Yeats
- The Living Beauty by William Butler Yeats
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works

Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003) an American poet, a contemporary classic of American poetry.