Francis Duggan Poems

On every street i see unsmiling faces
The coldness of Urban Humanity
And when i notice the indifference in others
My own reflection i can only see.
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In each human life it's said you'll find a story
And everyone has a story to tell
And even some children of quite wealthy parents
Have been through mental torture and through hell
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Many of you who have the power to help out others
You have not helped out ivy 'what's her name'
She's sixty years and on the street and homeless
And for her plight you won't take any blame.
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The young fellow next door barracks for Hawthorn
And after school he kicks the egg shaped ball
He wants to be as great as Jason Dunstall
And that his name football historians will recall.
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You might say she's not unattractive well educated and well read
And she is in her early twenties and her best days in life are ahead
She could have had a man of her own age as two fancy her Johnny and Fred
But she refused both their advances and she went for old Willie instead.
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It has been said by those who profess to know
That our body language our personality show
That a truthful person will look you in the face
Which seems a 'load of bull' in any case.
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It was Padraig Cronin told me how the ghosts of Ireland died
When the Irish freedom fighters only had one place to hide
And that was in the graveyards in the tombs they hid away
And their fear of ghosts then vanished that's what Padraig used to say.
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She said I come from a land flanked by the warmer seas
A flat brown land that stretch for miles with hardly any trees
In my dreams I see the big game parks and the open plains I see
'Oh' Africa my Africa I hear you calling me.
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I see them every morning in the early morning sky
And they pierce the silence of the dawn with grating harsh like cries
The sulphur crested cockatoos towards feeding paddocks fly
What's grating to the human ear is beauty to the eye.
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In St Davids in Wales i picked potatoes in my early twenties
And though that was more than thirty years ago
On looking back in time it doesn't seem that long
The months and years did not drag on that slow.
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