A poem by Alan Dugan
For old Billy Dugan, shot in the ass in the Civil War, my father said.
The old wound in my ass
has opened up again, but I
am past the prodigies
of youth’s campaigns, and weep
where I used to laugh
in war’s red humors, half
in love with silly-assed pains
and half not feeling them.
I have to sit up with
an indoor unsittable itch
before I go down late
and weeping to the storm-
cellar on a dirty night
and go to bed with the worms.
So pull the dirt up over me
and make a family joke
for Old Billy Blue Balls,
the oldest private in the world
with two ass-holes and no
place more to go to for a laugh
except the last one. Say:
The North won the Civil War
without much help from me
although I wear a proof
of the war’s obscenity.

A few random poems:
- Robert Burns: Ca’ The Yowes To The Knowes: Second Version
- Федор Сологуб – Светлый пир
- Нина Воронель – Запахи детства еще не забыты
- A Tale. June 1793 by William Cowper
- Владимир Маяковский – Новые силы в III Интернационале!.. (РОСТА №891)
- Hades’ Pitch by Rita Dove
- X: Some Verses: To His Most Affectionate Friend Mr. Lithgow by William Alexander
- The Times Are Nightfall poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Вам
- Robert Burns: Lines To John M’Murdo, Esq. Of Drumlanrig: Sent with some of the Author’s Poems.
- Dark Wood, Dark Water by Sylvia Plath
- I Remember, I Remember by Philip Larkin
- Distant Time by Rabindranath Tagore
- November by Thomas Hood
- Юлия Друнина – В семнадцать
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
- Heaven and You by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- Goddess by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- Ghazal to Pera Belle by Serkan Engin
- Garden of Sprites by Lyndsey Hylton
- Forgiveness by Zaklina (Jacqueline) Filipova- Svekjarovska
- For Aun by Lynne Scott
- Eternity by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- Come by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- Before You Returned by Shahida Latif
- Aquí te hubiese amado by Luz del Alba Nicola
- And because Love battles by Pablo Neruda
- An Untold Tale by Shahida Latif
- After the Last Glacier is Gone by Benjamin Alva Polley
- A Lover’s Prayer by St Antoine de la Vuadi
- Orlando Furioso Canto 19 by Ludovico Ariosto
- Orlando Furioso Canto 18 by Ludovico Ariosto
- His Insufficiency Of Praise by Luis Vaz de Camoes
- Light and Darkness
- You Are One For Whom Ma Heart Really Cares by Miraj Patel
- World’s Sweetest Sister Of Mine by Miraj Patel
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.