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:
- Константин Бальмонт – Море – вечное стремленье, горы – царственный покой
- Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur (excerpt) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Дафнис подслушивает сов
- Long, too Long, O Land! by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Маяковский – Эй, товарищи! От сбора продналога… (Главполитпросвет №284)
- Light by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Маяковский – Советский Союз, намотай на ус – кто Юз
- Василий Жуковский – Элизиум
- What’s wrong with volunteering?
- Daniel Dwithen, The Wise Chap by William Barnes
- Robert Burns: Epistle To Mrs. Scott: Gudewife of Wauchope-House, Roxburghshire.
- Henry Purcell poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- I’ve Lived To See Desire Vanish poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Владимир Солоухин – Яблоко
- Frozen by Priyanka Tungana
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
- Алексей Жемчужников – Почему
- Алексей Жемчужников – Письмо к юноше о ничтожности
- Алексей Жемчужников – Пауза
- Алексей Жемчужников – Памятник Пушкину
- Алексей Жемчужников – Отголосок девятой симфонии Бетховена
- Алексей Жемчужников – Осенью в швейцарской деревне
- Алексей Жемчужников – О, жизнь
- Алексей Хомяков – Русская песня
- Алексей Хомяков – Ritterspruch – Richterspruch
- Алексей Хомяков – Раскаявшейся России
- Алексей Хомяков – Просьба
- Алексей Толстой – Войдем сюда; здесь меж руин
- Алексей Толстой – Вновь растворилась дверь
- Алексей Толстой – Вeсeнние чувства
- Алексей Толстой – Василий Шибанов
- Алексей Толстой – В совести искал я долго обвиненья
- Алексей Толстой – В колокол, мирно дремавший, с налета тяжелая бомба
- Алексей Толстой – В альбом (Стрелок, на той поляне)
- Алексей Толстой – Уж ты нива моя, нивушка
- Алексей Толстой – Уж ласточки, кружась, над крышей щебетали
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.