A poem by Alan Dugan
Because of the unaccountable spirit of the troops
oh we were marched as we were never marched before
and flanked them off from home. Stupid Meade
was after them, head on to tail, but we convinced
him, finally, to flank, flank, cut off their head.
He finally understood, the idiot, and got a fort
named after him, for wisdom. He probably thought
Lee would conquer Washington from Appomattox
if he, Meade, should march his infantry behind
him, Lee. Ah well, the unaccountable spirit of the troops
triumphed, Meade got his fort, Grant got his presidency,
Sherman got his motto, what was it? War is heck?, Lee got a military school
for the education of young Southern gentlemen, and the Union
Army was taken over by Southern noncommissioned officers
in the wars against the Indians to the west. I know all
about this, I know who won, I served under them
for three hundred and fifty years in World War II,
just long enough not to be called a rookie but a veteran,
and realized the rank and order of my enemies:
first, the West Point officers; second, the red-neck sergeants;
third, the Nazis and perhaps the Japanese. I won
all of these wars as a private soldier, for a while,
and am happy to have done so: without me
Hitler and Hirohito would he ruling the world
instead of America and Russia, but I still will not
drive through Georgia with New York license plates.

A few random poems:
- I am only the house of your beloved by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Robert Burns: The Lad They Ca’Jumpin John:
- Михаил Лермонтов – Чума в Саратове
- Федор Сологуб – Своеволием рока
- Child of a Day by Walter Savage Landor
- Parting by William Butler Yeats
- Ode of Welcome by Oliver St. John Gogarty
- Иван Киуру – Песня моряка
- The Rhyme of the Three Sealers by Rudyard Kipling
- Николай Гумилев – Канцона (Бывает в жизни человека)
- The Child-Angel by Rabindranath Tagore
- A Wanderer by Siegfried Sassoon
- As a Beam O’er the Face of the Waters May Glow by Thomas Moore
- Intorduction to the Songs of Experience by William Blake
- A Dream of Rodney King by Mary TallMountain
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
- La Nue
- Kyrenaikos
- Juvenilia An Ode To Natural Beauty
- I Loved
- I Have A Rendezvous With Death
- Fragments
- Eudaemon
- El Extraviado
- Do You Remember Once
- Coucy
- Champagne 1914 15
- Broceliande
- Bellinglise
- At The Tomb Of Napoleon
- Ariosto Orlando Furioso Canto X 91 99
- Antinous
- An Ode To Antares
- All Thats Not Love
- After An Epigram Of Clement Marot
- A Message To America
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.