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Alan Dugan - Two Quits And A Drum, And Elegy For Drinkers
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1. ON ASPHALT: NO GREENS 


Quarry out the stone 
of land, cobble the beach, 
wall surf, name it “street,” 
allow no ground or green 
cover for animal sins, 
but let opacity of sand 
be glass to keep the heat 
outside, the senses in. 
Then, when time’s Drunk, 
reeling to death, provokes 
god’s favor as a fool, 
oh let a lamp post grow 
out of its absence, bend, 
heavy with care, and bloom 
light. Let a curb extrude 
a comfortable fault. Let 
“street” become a living room. 
Comfortably seated, lit 
by the solicitude of “lamp,” 
the Drunk and street are one. 
They say, “Let’s have no dirt: 
bulldoze the hills into 
their valleys: make it plain. 
Then take the mountains down 
and let their decks of slate 
be dealt out flat grey. 
Let their mating seams 
be tarred against the weeds 
by asphalt, by the night’s 
elixir of volcanoes hotly poured.” 
Then the soulless port at night 
is made a human, and the Drunk 
god: no one else is here 
to be so but who cares? 


2. PORTRAIT AGAINST WOMEN 


Bones, in his falling, 
must have hit the skin 
between themselves and stone, 
but distances of wine 
were his upholstery 
against the painful crime 
of lying in the street, 
since “God protects them.” 
He rolled onto his back, 
his right hand in his fly, 
and gargled open-mouthed, 
showing the white of an eye: 
it did not see the sign 
raised on the proper air 
that read: “Here lies 
a god-damned fool. Beware.” 
No: his hand, his woman, on 
the dry root of his sex, 
debates it: deformed by wine 
and fantasy, the wreck 
of infant memory is there, 
of how the garden gate 
slammed at the words, “Get 
out you god-damned bum,” 
and so he was, since she, 
goddess, mother, and wife, 
spoke and it was the fact. 
Her living hair came out 
gray in his hand, her teeth 
went false at his kiss, 
and her solid flesh went slack 
like mother’s. “Now, lady, 
I am sick and out of socks, 
so save me: I am pure although 
my hand is on my cock.” 
Then he could rise up young 
out of his vagrancy 
in whole unwilled reform 
and shuck the fallen one, 
his furlough in this street 
redeemed by her grace. 
There would be the grass 
to lay her on, the quench 
of milk behind the taste of wine, 
and laughter in a dreamed 
jungle of love behind 
a billboard that could read: 
“This is YOUR Garden: 
Please keep it clean.” 


3. COURAGE. EXCEED. 


A beggar with no legs below 
the middle of his knees 
walked down Third Avenue 
on padded sockets, on 
his telescoped or 
anti-stilted legs 
repeating, “Oh beautiful 
faspacious skies!” upon 
a one-man band: a bass 
drum on roller-skates, 
a mouth-high bugle clamped 
to it, and cymbals interlocked 
inside a fate of noise. He 
flew the American flag 
for children on a stick 
stuck in a veteran’s hat, 
and offered pencils. He 
was made of drunks’ red eyes. 
He cried, “Courage! Exceed!” 
He was collapsed in whole 
display. Drunkards, for this 
and with his pencil I 
put down his words drunk: 
“Stand! Improvise!” 


4. ELEGY FOR DRINKERS 


What happened to the drunks 
I used to know, the prodigals 
who tried their parents’ help 
too far? Some misers of health 
have aged out dry; the rest 
are sick and out of socks, 
their skin-tight anklebones 
blue as the mussel shells 
that rolled in Naxos’ surf 
when Bacchus danced ashore 
and kicked them all to hell. 


       Oh gutter urinal, 
       be Dirce’s holy stream, 
       so lightning out of Zeus 
       can rage on Semele, 
       invited! Permit her son, 
       issuant of His thigh, 
       to rule her family 
       as Bromios, god of wine! 


Oh Dionisos, good god 
of memory and sleep, 
you grace the paper bag, 
stuck in the fork of a crutch, 
that holds the secret sons 
and furniture of bums, 
since wine is the cure of wine. 
It’s thanks to you that I, 
in my condition, am 
still possible and praising: I 
am drunk today, but what 
about tomorrow? I burnt 
my liver to you for a drink, 
so pay me for my praises: 
for thirty-seven cents, for 
the price of a pint of lees, 
I would praise wine, your name, 
and how your trouble came 
out of the east to Thebes: 
you taught the women wine 
and tricked King Pentheus 
to mask as one of them: 
because his father died 
to all appeals for help, 
the rending penalty, 
death at his mother’s hands!, 
still fills The Bowery 
with prodigals of hope: 
they pray for lightning and 
a dance to their god damn, 
since wine is the cure of wine 
and wine the cure wine cured 
and wine the cure of wine.
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