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:
- Федор Сологуб – Сверкайте, миги строгих дней
- Memorials Of A Tour In Scotland, 1803 XII. Sonnet Composed At —- Castle by William Wordsworth
- The Rising and Falling of Trees by Patricia Fargnoli
- Owl by Sylvia Plath
- Book1 Prologue by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- june_sick_room.html
- Autumn by Siegfried Sassoon
- Василий Казин – На могиле матери
- Iceland First Seen by William Morris
- Владимир Маяковский – Голос Красной площади
- English Poetry. Henry Livingston. To the Memory of Sarah Livingston. Генри Ливингстон.
- Epigram to Miss Jean Scott by Robert Burns
- Владимир Корнилов – Лермонтов
- The Wish to be Generous by Wendell Berry
- Владислав Ходасевич – Обо всем в одних стихах не скажешь
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
- Tom The Lunatic by William Butler Yeats
- Tom O’Roughley by William Butler Yeats
- To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time by William Butler Yeats
- To Dorothy Wellesley by William Butler Yeats
- To Be Carved On A Stone At Thoor Ballylee by William Butler Yeats
- To A Young Girl by William Butler Yeats
- To A Young Beauty by William Butler Yeats
- To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators Of His And Mine by William Butler Yeats
- To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing by William Butler Yeats
- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
- Poems by William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience and the Book of Thel
- Written In March by William Wordsworth
- To the City of London by William Dunbar
- To a Lady by William Dunbar
- The Sirens’ Song by William Browne
- The Rose by William Browne
- The Quarry by William Vaughn Moody
- The Daguerreotype by William Vaughn Moody
- The Blues by William Matthews
- Song by William Browne
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.