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.
A few random poems:
- Юрий Коринец – Март
- Disingenuousness by Mark R Slaughter
- Юлия Друнина – Я, признаться, сберечь не сумела шинели
- Love and Wine by William Wycherley
- Олег Григорьев – Гений
- Borrowed Verses by Subhash Misra
- Владимир Набоков – Безумец
- Open sky by Shailendra Chauhan
- Sonnet 42: That thou hast her, it is not all my grief by William Shakespeare
- On the Idle Hill of Summer by A. E. Housman
- Олег Бундур – Друзья
- Валерий Брюсов – Из арабской лирики отрывок
- Алишер Навои – Луна в носилках, о постой
- The Fearful by Sylvia Plath
- Solitudes by Satish Verma
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Ольга Ермолаева – Если о плачущих
- Ольга Ермолаева – Будет весь день долбить
- Ольга Ермолаева – Барственный Шехтель все ирисы лепит на фриз
- Ольга Берггольц – Вечерняя станция
- Ольга Берггольц – Ты в пустыню меня послала
- Ольга Берггольц – Ты будешь ждать
- Ольга Берггольц – Трагедия всех трагедий
- Ольга Берггольц – Стихи о себе
- Ольга Берггольц – Слепой
- Ольга Берггольц – Сейчас тебе всё кажется тобой
- Ольга Берггольц – Романс стойкого оловянного солдатика
- Ольга Берггольц – Разведчик
- Ольга Берггольц – Пусть голосуют дети
- Ольга Берггольц – Приятелям
- Ольга Берггольц – Феодосия
- Ольга Берггольц – Здравствуй
- Ольга Берггольц – Знаю, чем меня пленила
- Ольга Берггольц – Заметь, заметь, Как легчает сердце
- Ольга Берггольц – Я все оставляю тебе при уходе
- Ольга Берггольц – Я так хочу, так верю, так люблю
More external links (open in a new tab):
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.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works

Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003) an American poet, a contemporary classic of American poetry.