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 

• Behind a Wall poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Before the Altar poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Before the Altar poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Before Dawn poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Azure and Gold poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Azure and Gold poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Aubade poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• At Night poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• At Night poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Astigmatism poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Astigmatism poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Apples of Hesperides poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Apples of Hesperides poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Apology poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Apology poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Anticipation poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Anticipation poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• An Opera House poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• An Opera House poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• An Aquarium poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

Dealing Monster

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.

 

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