Francis Duggan Poems

They come here after work each day
To drink their fill and spend their pay
To merry make and poker play
In the uptown pub of Jack O Ray.
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To Jack Iversen do not condemn the rabbit
For with you he is bound to disagree
I've often heard him say back in the lean years
The bunny was a real good friend to me.
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This is a song of a working class person
One that I know though I often don't meet
She is an inspiration to the battlers
Maria the woman who lives on Watt street.
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The birds already nesting and Spring not far away
And white backed magpie fluting long before dawn of day
And territorial spur winged plover above his breeding ground
Is calling in the darkness as he flies around and round.
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I came here from the County of Fermanagh almost fifty years ago
From the Land of het and shamrock, small green fields and green hedgerows
Met a gentleman from Kerry married him and settled down
Here in Victoria Australia The Garden City Melbourne Town.
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Tree branches were often his ceiling and the cold ground was often his bed
And he had scary stories of Oregon to make the hair stand on your head
He spent his prime years at stock herding and in that wild land his fortune he made
And he was a straight talking fellow the type who called a spade a spade.
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It was the union of poetic icons and their life together full of love and harmony
And they left behind them marvellous poems and sonnets and together now they live in history
They rank amongst the great poets of their era and the literary critics respect to them pay
And their verses perhaps will live on forever and their works are very much alive today.
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He feels his life has spun out of control
And only darkness envelopes his soul
With living costs and a huge mortgage to pay
His redundancy cheque will not go a long way.
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Though the day is mild for the time of year and mild enough the weather
The Autumn leaves are falling fast as light as any feather
And ash tree now losing her leaves each day she's looking barer
A few months back in Summer's prime than her there was none fairer.
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To the Country that he fled from he never can go back
The poor bloke from the desert of southern Iraq
Long dark hair and a dark beard one of an oppressed race
He's in his early thirties but he has an older face.
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