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:
- Give Me Strength by Rabindranath Tagore
- A Song Of The Princess by Sara Teasdale
- Robert Burns: Inscription To Miss Graham Of Fintry:
- Robert Burns: O Wat Ye Wha’s In Yon Town:
- In Abeyance by Satish Verma
- Константин Бальмонт – Да, я люблю одну тебя
- Gyrations by Satish Verma
- Виктор Гончаров – Не знаю, что делать с душою
- Алексей Толстой – Василий Шибанов
- Владимир Маяковский – Понедельник – субботник
- Sonet 34 by William Alexander
- Николай Тихонов – Крутили мельниц диких жернова
- Robert Burns: The Farewell:
- Morning by Mark R Slaughter
- To Sr Henry Vane The Younger poem – John Milton poems
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
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Дафнис подслушивает сов
- Толстой Алексей Николаевич стихи: Читать стихотворения Алексея Толстого – Список произведений, стихов поэта на Poetry Monster
- The Hecatomb to his Mistress by John Cleveland
- To the State of Love. Or the Senses’ Festival. By John Cleveland
- I love you
- A Human Being Needs Strong Tea
- Dog racing
- Dissolve in kisses, I would like to dissolve in your kisses
- Tale of the Pope and of His Workman Balda
- Who of you ever
- Аnything can happen
- Outside the Window, Snow
- You must once
- February 23
- May 19th – the Young Pioneers Day
- Море волнуется, манит к себе
- Море огней украшает причалы, вокзалы
- Кипение
- Каждому сроку – свой путь
- Каждый день и каждый миг судьбу благодарю
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.