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 

• Orpheus with his Lute Made Trees by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Orpheus by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Not marble nor the guilded monuments (Sonnet 55) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck (Sonnet 14) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Love by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• It was a Lover and his Lass by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Hark! Hark! The Lark by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• From you have I been absent in the spring… (Sonnet 98) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fidele by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fear No More by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fairy Land v by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fairy Land iv by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fairy Land iii by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fairy Land ii by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Dirge of the Three Queens by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Dirge by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Carpe Diem by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Bridal Song by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

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