Portrait From The Infantry

A poem by Alan Dugan

He smelled bad and was red-eyed with the miseries

of being scared while sleepless when he said

this: “I want a private woman, peace and quiet,

and some green stuff in my pocket. Fuck

the rest.” Pity the underwear and socks,

long burnt, of an accomplished murderer,

oh God, of germans and replacements, who

refused three stripes to keep his B.A.R.,

who fought, fought not to fight some days

like any good small businessman of war,

and dug more holes than an outside dog

to modify some Freudian’s thesis: “No

man can stand three hundred days

of fear of mutilation and death.” What he

theorized was a joke: “To keep a tight

asshole, dry socks and a you-deep hole

with you at all times.” Afterwards,

met in a sports shirt with a round wife, he was

the clean slave of a daughter, a power brake

and beer. To me, he seemed diminished

in his dream, or else enlarged, who knows?,

by its accomplishment: personal life

wrung from mass issues in a bloody time

and lived out hiddenly. Aside from sound

baseball talk, his only interesting remark

was, in pointing to his wife’s belly, “If

he comes out left foot first” (the way

you Forward March!), “I am going to stuff

him back up.” “Isn’t he awful?” she said.

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Poems in English 

• Far In a Western Brookland poem – Alfred Edward Housman by Alfred Edward Houseman
• Far In a Western Brookland poem – Alfred Edward Housman by Alfred Edward Houseman
• Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries poem – A. E. Housman by Alfred Edward Houseman
• Could Man Be Drunk Forever poem – A. E. Housman by Alfred Edward Houseman
• Bring, In This Timeless Grave To Throw poem – A. E. Housman by Alfred Edward Houseman
• Bredon Hill poem – A. E. Housman by Alfred Edward Houseman
• As Through the Wild Green Hills of Wyre poem – A. E. Housman by Alfred Edward Houseman
• Along the field as we came poem – A. E. Housman by Alfred Edward Houseman
• The Haymakers’ Song poem – Alfred Austin by Poetry In English
• Love’s Blindness poem – Alfred Austin by Poetry In English
• At His Grave poem – Alfred Austin by Poetry In English
• Agatha poem – Alfred Austin by Poetry In English
• Loves Blindness by Poetry In English
• The Haymakers Song by Poetry In English
• Loves Blindness by Poetry In English
• At His Grave by Poetry In English
• Agatha by Poetry In English
• Why by Poetry In English
• Where Are You by Poetry In English
• Tell Me by Poetry In English

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