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:
- Николай Гумилев – Канцона вторая
- They Thought Her Crazy by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Haiku: The Bluebird and the Sky by Monty Gilmer
- Николай Гумилев – Канцона (Бывает в жизни человека)
- Evening balcony by Vladimir Marku
- My Friends by W. S. Merwin
- Омар Хайям – День прошел, и о нем позабудь поскорей
- Rich or Poor by William Henry Davies
- A Carol by Rudyard Kipling
- Robert Burns: The Holy Fair:
- Николай Гумилев – Живала Ниагара
- A World So Different by Mary Etta Metcalf
- The Hermit At Outermost House by Sylvia Plath
- A Coat by William Butler Yeats
- Half The People In The World by Yehuda Amichai
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
- Владимир Маяковский – Помогите цинготным детям (Главполитпросвет №274)
- Владимир Маяковский – Помогай фронту… (РОСТА №480)
- Владимир Маяковский – Помните
- Владимир Маяковский – Помни о дне красной казармы! (РОСТА № 732)
- Владимир Маяковский – Поляки-крестьяне, чтоб вольными быть…
- Владимир Маяковский – Польша
- Владимир Маяковский – Политические партии в России
- Владимир Маяковский – Поэт рабочий
- Владимир Маяковский – ПОДХОДИ, ТОВАРИЩ, СМОТРИ ЛУЧШЕ… (Главполитпросвет №69)
- Владимир Маяковский – Подписи к рисункам в журнале “ВОБ”
- Владимир Маяковский – Подлиза
- Владимир Маяковский – Почему нет помощи от Румынии (Главполитпросвет №327)
- Владимир Маяковский – Победой увенчав Октябрьский бой… (Главполитпросвет №364)
- Владимир Маяковский – По городам Союза
- Владимир Маяковский – Плюшкин
- Владимир Маяковский – Плакаты, 1928
- Владимир Маяковский – Плакат о жилищно-строительном займе
- Владимир Маяковский – Письмо Татьяне Яковлевой
- Владимир Маяковский – Письмо к любимой Молчанова, брошенной им
- Владимир Маяковский – Пилсудский
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.