Francis Duggan Poems

The clock keeps on ticking and ticking away
And the poet of the past is the rhymer of today
And the boy of the fifties showing his years in gray
The Reaper on all lives has the final say
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Don't waste your prayers on my soul for your own soul you pray
For my sins against others to Karma I must pay
To you I'm just a damned soul one who pens doggerel
Doomed to a life hereafter in the poetasters hell
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The nesting songbirds are singing on the sunlit bushes and trees
On this warm day in September of close to thirty degrees
The cows in the nearby paddock sit and chew their cuds at ease
And there is a pleasant freshness in the freshening coastal breeze
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What matter if you are religious or an atheist or agnostically inclined
When it matters more that you are one who is decent and kind
Or not racist in any way towards black or white or brown
And with your words you never ever put another down
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The horned ewe on Clara hill so mournfully did bleat
As she stood beside her new born lamb stretched on the soft green heath
She'd licked the birth slime from her lamb she'd licked him clean and dry
But the little lamb lay motionless he did not blink an eye.
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A World beater in his prime and a real hard act to follow
And the greatest of the sporting greats to hail from old Duhallow
Two Olympic Gold for hammer throwing his life's great success story
Some sixty five years or more ago he crowned himself in glory.
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Old Joe in the house at the corner for five years he has lived on his own
And he has lived all of his life in the district and all over the town he is known
He doesn't have a T.V. or radio doesn't even have a telephone
Those would be of little use to him for he is as deaf as a stone.
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When Abba sang the winner takes it all
It came to me before we walked we crawled
And the race to success is an uphill race
And only one can finish in first place.
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Like kite he hang there in the sunlit sky
For a few minutes and then in circles fly
As he scans the ground below for smaller prey
A predator he hunts for his food this way.
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He met her at the Dalyston Hall on a Winter's night in June
And he asked her would she like to dance to an old fashioned tune
And to music of the twenties they waltzed around the floor
And she was sixty two years old and he was sixty four.
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