Francis Duggan Poems

Goodbye to friends and family is never easy to say
To those you may not see again for many a day
You are bound for a place that is far away
Your mood matches the weather the sky is gloomy gray,
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These noisy Music Festivals where the rock bands are so loud
Where peace is quiet a stranger amongst the noisy crowd
I have been in such gatherings though I felt out of place there
A balding man near sixty with gray and straggly hair.
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I heard the black swans in the clear moonlit sky
As above the Town to the lake they did fly
To me they do have such a musical song
You hear them once and you never get them wrong.
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It's been fifteen years I remember and now I'm fifty four
Since I last walked from Millstreet Town along the roadway to Rathmore
The fields of Inchaleigh and Claraghatlea North lit by the moon's faint light
And stars shone in the heavens on that November night.
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Beth the daughter of the late artist Jack now seeking her own fame
And in the World of Literature she builds herself a name
She writes poems and stories and articles for magazine
And she's becoming well known in the Gippsland literary scene.
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She's almost sixty years and she's still dancing and she is still known as the dancing queen
And she was a champion dancer in her twenties one of the finest dancers ever seen
And still she is a marvel on the dance floor and with dancers half her age she can compete
The passing years may have slowed her a little but there's still years of dancing in her dancing feet.
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Happy Birthday to you Genevieve today you are twenty nine
And with age you have grown mellow like the good expensive wine
And on looking back a decade the years simply seemed to fly
And hope this tenth day of August is a day you will enjoy.
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Some 50 kilometres out of the next country town
The miles of flat paddocks looking gray to brown
The hues of Australia are gray, brown and green
This great Land looks different to others you've seen.
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You are three years old Fiona at beginning of life's way
And I hope you had a good party and a wonderful birthday
Just a three year little lady and yet too young to know
That life's pathway isn't rosy thorns on life's pathway grow.
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Born in a tent in the gold fields of New South Wales Australia's greatest writer many say
And in his life time he had thousands of readers and he has millions of readers today
Afflicted by deafness and mental illness and cursed by alcoholism one well might say his life a tragedy
And like many good writers before and after he spent his last years in utter poverty.
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