Great Regulars: That poem is about 100 words long.

Some writers need that much space to clear their throats; Dugan goes rapidly from plain American speech like "but it went by, it all/goes by, that is the thing/about the river" to the Battle of Granicus, the Lacedaemonians and that Alexander who is in many places called "the Great."

But he is never called "the Great" in Dugan's poem--because, you might say, the poet is that drunk-seeming soldier on the log, who addresses us ba-bas from the messy and appalling river of history.

from Robert Pinsky: NPR: Poetry With An Edge: The Acerbic Wit Of Alan Dugan

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