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:
- From an Essay on Man poem – Alexander Pope
- The Deserted Garden
- An Abandoned Factory, Detroit by Philip Levine
- Омар Хайям – Листья дерева жизни, отпущенной мне
- Sher Afzul
- Nomenclature
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Evasion. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet XIV. Addressed To The Same (Haydon) poem – John Keats poems
- In The Stone I Rooted
- When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
- The Song poem – Andrei Voznesensky poems
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песня про стукача
- The Fabulists by Rudyard Kipling
- The Gardener LI: Then Finish the Last Song by Rabindranath Tagore
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
- Владимир Степанов – Цыплята (Буква Ц)
- Владимир Степанов – Что мы Родиной зовём
- Владимир Степанов – Барби (Буква Б)
- Владимир Степанов – Акробат (Буква А)
- Владимир Соловьев – Знамение
- Владимир Солоухин – Яблоко
- Владимир Солоухин – Все смотрю
- Владимир Солоухин – Волки
- Владимир Солоухин – Ветер
- Владимир Солоухин – Вдоль берегов Болгарии прошли мы
- Владимир Солоухин – В лесу
- Владимир Солоухин – Утро
- Владимир Солоухин – У тихой речки детство проводя
- Владимир Солоухин – У моря
- Владимир Солоухин – Тропа нацелена в звезду
- Владимир Солоухин – Теперь-то уж плакать нечего
- Владимир Орлов – Очень хорошая девочка Яна
- Владимир Орлов – Ночной листок
- Владимир Орлов – Не боится Дима
- Владимир Орлов – Март
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.