A poem by Alan Dugan
For old Billy Dugan, shot in the ass in the Civil War, my father said.
The old wound in my ass
has opened up again, but I
am past the prodigies
of youth’s campaigns, and weep
where I used to laugh
in war’s red humors, half
in love with silly-assed pains
and half not feeling them.
I have to sit up with
an indoor unsittable itch
before I go down late
and weeping to the storm-
cellar on a dirty night
and go to bed with the worms.
So pull the dirt up over me
and make a family joke
for Old Billy Blue Balls,
the oldest private in the world
with two ass-holes and no
place more to go to for a laugh
except the last one. Say:
The North won the Civil War
without much help from me
although I wear a proof
of the war’s obscenity.
A few random poems:
- Владимир Высоцкий – Я уверен, как ни разу в жизни
- Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service by T. S. Eliot
- Woman In Front Of Poster Of Herself poem – Alice Notley
- Across the Street from the Whitmore Home for Girls, 1949 by Rachel McKibbens
- Lines Inscribed in a Lady’s Pocket Almanack by Robert Burns
- Аля Кудряшева – Ходят катера по Малой Невке
- The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poppies on Ludlow Castle by Willa Cather
- A Peck of Gold by Robert Frost
- Яков Полонский – На Женевском озере
- Владимир Высоцкий – Мартовский Заяц
- Paralipomemnon
- No LOVE by venkatesh.valusa
- The Star by Sara Teasdale
- A Meeting With Despair by Thomas Hardy
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.