Swing Shift Blues

A poem by Alan Dugan

What is better than leaving a bar

in the middle of the afternoon

besides staying in it or not

having gone into it in the first place

because you had a decent woman to be with?

The air smells particularly fresh

after the stale beer and piss smells.

You can stare up at the whole sky:

it’s blue and white and does not

stare back at you like the bar mirror,

and there’s Whats-‘is-name coming out

right behind you saying, “I don’t

believe it, I don’t believe it: there

he is, staring up at the fucking sky

with his mouth open. Don’t

you realize, you stupid son of a bitch,

that it is a quarter to four

and we have to clock in in

fifteen minutes to go to work?”

So we go to work and do no work

and can even breathe in the Bull’s face

because he’s been into the other bar

that we don’t go to when he’s there.

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Poems in English 

• The Blessed by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Black Tower by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Balloon Of The Mind by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Ballad Of The Foxhunter by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Ballad Of Moll Magee by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Ballad Of Father O’Hart by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Ballad Of Father Gilligan by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Arrow by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Apparitions by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• That The Night Come by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Symbols by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Swift’s Epitaph by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Sweet Dancer by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Supernatural Songs by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Stream And Sun At Glendalough by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Statistics by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Spilt Milk by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Song For The Severed Head In `The King Of The Great Clock Tower’ by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Solomon To Sheba by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Solomon And The Witch by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats

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