Prison Song

A poem by Alan Dugan

The skin ripples over my body like moon-wooed water,

rearing to escape me. Where could it find another

animal as naked as the one it hates to cover?

Once it told me what was happening outside,

who was attacking, who caressing, and what the air

was doing to feed or freeze me. Now I wake up

dark at night, in a textureless ocean of ignorance,

or fruit bites back and water bruises like a stone.

It’s jealousy, because I look for other tools to know

with, and other armor, better girded to my wish.

So let it lie, turn off the clues or try to leave:

sewn on me seamless like those painful shirts

the body-hating saints wore, the sheath of hell

is pierced to my darkness nonetheless: what traitors

labor in my face, what hints they smuggle through

its arching guard! But even in the night it jails,

with nothing but its lies and silences to feed upon,

the jail itself can make a scenery, sing prison songs,

and set off fireworks to praise a homemade day.

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Poems in English 

• Sixteen Dead Men by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Shepherd And Goatherd by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• September 1913 by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Sailing To Byzantium by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Running To Paradise by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Roger Casement by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Responsibilities; Introduction by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Hosting Of The Sidhe by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Host Of The Air by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Heart Of The Woman by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Hawk by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Happy Townland by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Gyres by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Grey Rock by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Ghost Of Roger Casement by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Fool By The Roadside by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Folly Of Being Comforted by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Fisherman by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Fish by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Fiddler Of Dooney by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats

More external links (open in a new tab):

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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.

 

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