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 

• Sonnet CXXX: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet CXXX by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Winter by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• When to the sessions of sweet silent thought (Sonnet 30) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• When that I was and a little tiny boy by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes (Sonnet 29) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Under the Greenwood Tree by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Three Songs by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• The Quality of Mercy by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Spring in New Hampshire by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXXI by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXX by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXVII by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXVI by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXV by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXIX by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXIV: When I Have Seen by Time’s Fell Hand Defac’d by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

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