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:
- Mine and Thine by William Morris
- Near The Wall Of A House by Yehuda Amichai
- Social Amenities poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Низами Гянджеви – Месяц неполный прошел
- Pejar Creek by Mary Gilmore
- Михаил Ломоносов – Чем ты дале прочь отходишь
- София Парнок – И голос окликнул тебя среди ночи
- Олег Бундур – Дома
- Владимир Степанов – Рассказ оружейника
- Arcady Unheeding by Siegfried Sassoon
- Philomela by Sir Philip Sidney
- Владимир Британишский – Перед самой войной
- Sonnet XVII. Happy Is England poem – John Keats poems
- I have outlived my own desires by Alexander Pushkin (Pouchkine)
- O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W H Auden
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
- Ольга Берггольц – Озерный край
- Ольга Берггольц – Ответ
- Ольга Берггольц – От сердца к сердцу
- Ольга Берггольц – Осень (Мне осень озёрного края)
- Ольга Берггольц – Она дарить любила
- Ольга Берггольц – Огонь, и воду, и медные трубы
- Ольга Берггольц – Обещание
- Ольга Берггольц – О, наверное, он не вернётся
- Ольга Берггольц – О, где ты запела
- Ольга Берггольц – О да, простые, бедные слова
- Ольга Берггольц – Новогодний тост
- Ольга Берггольц – Ни до серебряной и ни до золотой
- Ольга Берггольц – Не знаю, не знаю, живу
- Ольга Берггольц – Не сына, не младшего брата
- Ольга Берггольц – Не может быть, чтоб жили мы напрасно
- Ольга Берггольц – Наш сад
- Ольга Берггольц – Нам от тебя теперь не оторваться
- Ольга Берггольц – Надежда
- Ольга Берггольц – На Ивана-пьющего
- Ольга Берггольц – Моя медаль
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.