Francis Duggan Poems

The birds still sing as their ancestors years ago
The chock of wattlebird the caw of crow
And the one other remaining link to long gone years
The gum and wattle trees still growing here.
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There's years of sorrow in her eyes those eyes as blue as sloes
And her hair once dark is now quite gray she has a flattened nose
She's known the wrath of angry man she took his angry blows
But she once was young and beautiful the battered widow Rose.
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He was a horse breaker old Graybeard Joe
But that was many, many years ago
One of the best his fame known far and wide
Up in the Snowy Mountain countryside.
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I've seen some of the World beyond Duhallow
And so many roads I've travelled up and down
And a long long way from Australia to Ireland
And even further still to Millstreet Town.
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I'm always with the underdog though age has made me mellow
And I have been described at times as a sentimental fellow
I don't admire the Powerbrokers the big wheels of the city
My sympathies are with the poor the poor alone I pity.
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The ash tree stand forlorn and bare
In the cold winter night air
Without the glossy green array
That was his on summer day.
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I'd love to be between Loch and Wonthaggi
Where mountain creek through small wood winds it's way
And join the Powlett river down the hill
That flows into the sea at Powlett bay.
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Humans were always predators and though that gene we now suppress
It still remains in all of us in our drive for success
And though modern man no longer is compelled to kill to eat
The most of us still predators as the most of us eat meat.
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I know from where my life's journey began and god knows where 'tis ending
And I am just a wandering man and what's the use pretending
That I belong to any place to any State or Nation
Life can be like a mystery trip to an unknown destination.
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The migrant redwing thrushes from the bare hedgerows fly
And the dark rain clouds of February go slowly drifting by
And the lark today is silent he doesn't carol in the sky
High up there in the cloud world o'er the fields of Lisnaboy.
...