Portside

The Augean stables were so full of horseshit
that the Augean nobles came to laugh at Hercules
when he was told to muck them out by hand.
They hoped to see him filthy on his knees,
all asshole and elbows going fast for years.
Instead he wrenched a river from its bed upstream
and set wild water roaring through the place
and washed it all away, all
the horseshit, and I mean all
the horseshit – the horseshit, the horses,
the stables, and the nobles too,
standing around ready to bugger Him,
Hercules, Wrestler of Rivers. Conclusion:
Revolting conditions elicit revolutionary solutions.

American poet Alan Dugan was born in Brooklyn and died in Hyannis, MA. In between he wrote poetry for forty years. Robert Pinsky says of him, “Dugan’s remarkable achievement is to see into mean or mundane materials with all the profundity and force of poetry.”