Francis Duggan Poems

He has one wish for the future a small house beside the sea
Where the wild waves of Pacific keep on rumbling ceaselessly
Phillip Island or San Remo, Cape Paterson or Inverloch
Just a small house by the ocean on a quarter acre block.
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The place I once called home is no longer so to me
And a migrant in this Land is all I can be
But I am happy to live here and here I will stay
Until the Grim Reaper on my life has his say
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Only knew she never married dear kind hearted Nancy Gray
And never thought that she had children but that's not so one known to say
One who know her better than I say that Nancy had a son
But that he never came home to her when the battle had been won.
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I've often wondered why he did not stay
In his green country all those miles away
Since nostalgia he has not yet outgrown
And he still refers to Northampton as home? .
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My dad sold black Tom our old work-horse when he had known a better day
But what happened to him after that I do not know for to say
Suppose he was slaughtered for dog meat few work-horses of old age do die
To say that all work-horses become children pets would be telling a lie
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From the Gougane Barra he made famous his bones lay far away
But the poems of J J Callanan alive and well today
Buried in distant Portugal the translator and poet
In Ireland's literary history remains as one of note
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For to win the war many must die and the dead forever dead
Forget about making war mate you should make love instead
For making love is very beautiful of love the poets do sing
It is better by far than making war as war is a horrid thing,
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When they feel hungry with their urge for meat
The birds of prey hunt other birds to eat
They even tackle and kill birds of them a greater size
In Nature few things do seem to surprise
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On few things 'twould seem we do ever agree
The failure to you is a success to me
'Tis true one person's weed is another's rose
So few think on the same lines one would have to suppose
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I know him only as my neighbour and though I see him most every day
For each of us a struggle for to find words for to say
Whenever we come face to face in the park or on the street
'Tis just a hello in passing we don't chat when we meet
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