Portrait From The Infantry

A poem by Alan Dugan

He smelled bad and was red-eyed with the miseries

of being scared while sleepless when he said

this: “I want a private woman, peace and quiet,

and some green stuff in my pocket. Fuck

the rest.” Pity the underwear and socks,

long burnt, of an accomplished murderer,

oh God, of germans and replacements, who

refused three stripes to keep his B.A.R.,

who fought, fought not to fight some days

like any good small businessman of war,

and dug more holes than an outside dog

to modify some Freudian’s thesis: “No

man can stand three hundred days

of fear of mutilation and death.” What he

theorized was a joke: “To keep a tight

asshole, dry socks and a you-deep hole

with you at all times.” Afterwards,

met in a sports shirt with a round wife, he was

the clean slave of a daughter, a power brake

and beer. To me, he seemed diminished

in his dream, or else enlarged, who knows?,

by its accomplishment: personal life

wrung from mass issues in a bloody time

and lived out hiddenly. Aside from sound

baseball talk, his only interesting remark

was, in pointing to his wife’s belly, “If

he comes out left foot first” (the way

you Forward March!), “I am going to stuff

him back up.” “Isn’t he awful?” she said.

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Poems in English 

• Madonna poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Love’s Wisdom poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Love’s Unity poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Love’s Harvest poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Love’s Fitfulness poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Love’s Wisdom poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Love’s Fitfulness poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Love Of Life poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Love Of Life poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Lost poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• “Look up, desponding hearts! See, Morning sallies” poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Lines Written On Visiting The Chateaux On The Loire poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Let The Weary World Go Round poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Leszko The Bastard poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• “`Know, Nature, like the cuckoo, laughs at law” poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Is Life Worth Living? poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• Inflexible As Fate poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• In The Month When Sings The Cuckoo poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• In The Forum poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin
• In Sutton Woods poem – Alfred Austin by Alfred Austin

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