Francis Duggan Poems

Across the bare brown hill of this old Country the kookaburras voice rings loud and clear
Just before twilight in the quiet of evening a voice that one is likely for to hear
Overlooking the quiet streets of the Village the silence one might say almost profound
And when the kookaburras have done with their laughter silence and darkness covers the high ground.
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I know that I was born in a far Country but I'm not to know or where my life's journey will end
And on our life's journey there's many a crossroad
and on our life's journey there's many a bend
In life we all have different expectations and dreams for everyone do not come true
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The old pair there they seem so very happy and they are two who've never sought renown
Raised on the same street they were childhood sweethearts and they raised their children here in their Hometown
Still so much in love and they in their late sixties they walk in the Town Parkland hand in hand
And others unhappy in their third or fourth marriage us human beings are hard to understand.
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She died in a horrific motoring accident close to her Monbulk abode
Her life from her was taken on the Belgrave Kallista road
Elica Rizmal Vinko's beloved wife at rest forever more
And her spirit is in Slovenia far from Australia's shore.
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You will find every human being has some story to tell
Of a life of great happiness or of a life of hell
One born to be a pauper and one born to be a millionaire
Yet despite our different lifestyles things in common we share,
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I hunted hares and rabbits back in my teenage years
And for the suffering of wild things I did not have any tears
But the years have made me mellow we all mellow with age
And now I pity the little bird I see locked in a cage.
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I won't be going to that far Land to see the flowers of May
And hear the chaffinch singing in the leafy wood all day
And watch the swallows o'er the fields chase insects as they fly
And hear the lark above the hill a minstrel of the sky.
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Pene the artist has a favourite poet
And lines of his verses she recalls and quote
Without much prompting of him she does speak
In John Shaw Neilson's poetry solace she does seek.
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Each day things of beauty I'm privileged to see
The beauty of Nature is all around me
The gray butcherbird pipes on the wattle tree
His song is embedded in my memory.
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I've been told 'tis a changed place from the place I did know
Where the old Finnow river to the Blackwater flow
But the landscape as such would not have changed much at all
Every bend of the river I still can recall.
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