For old Billy Dugan,
shot in the ass in 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’ red humors, half
in love with silly-assed pains
and half not feeling them.
I have to sit up with
an outdoor unsittable itch
before I go down late
and weeping to the storm-
cellar on a dirt night
and go to bed with the worms.
So pull the dirt 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 for the last one. Say:
The North won the Civil War without much help from me although I wear proof of the war’s obscenity.