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:
- Владимир Высоцкий – Всё с себя снимаю, слишком душно
- Николай Языков – Елагиной
- Sandys Ghost ; A Proper Ballad on the New Ovid’s Metamorphosis poem – Alexander Pope
- Earth the Healer, Earth the Keeper by William Morris
- Олег Бундур – Чайковский
- Robert Burns: Tam O’ Shanter: A Tale
- Argus poem – Alexander Pope
- Kumarakom (after the boat tragedy) by Shreekumar Varma
- A Memory Of Youth by William Butler Yeats
- Николай Языков – А. Н. Вульфу (Мой брат по вольности и хмелю)
- Robert Burns: The Braes O’ Killiecrankie:
- A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
- Epistle To Mrs Teresa Blount.[On Her Leaving The Town After The Coronation] poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- 1914 I: Peace by Rupert Brooke
- Cleared by Rudyard Kipling
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
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Poems in English
- The Seven Sisters by William Wordsworth
- The Sailor’s Mother by William Wordsworth
- The Russian Fugitive by William Wordsworth
- The Reverie of Poor Susan by William Wordsworth
- The Redbreast Chasing The Butterfly by William Wordsworth
- The Prioress’s Tale [from Chaucer] by William Wordsworth
- The Primrose of the Rock by William Wordsworth
- The Power of Armies is a Visible Thing by William Wordsworth
- The Pet-Lamb by William Wordsworth
- The Passing of the Elder Bards by William Wordsworth
- The Old Cumberland Beggar by William Wordsworth
- The Oak Of Guernica Supposed Address To The Same by William Wordsworth
- The Morning Of The Day Appointed For A General Thanksgiving. January 18, 1816 by William Wordsworth
- The King Of Sweden by William Wordsworth
- The Idle Shepherd Boys by William Wordsworth
- The Horn Of Egremont Castle by William Wordsworth
- The Highland Broach by William Wordsworth
- The Happy Warrior by William Wordsworth
- The Green Linnet by William Wordsworth
- The Germans On The Heighs Of Hochheim by William Wordsworth
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Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003) an American poet, a contemporary classic of American poetry.