Francis Duggan Poems

Yesterday has gone like every yesterday
And our biological clocks ever ticking away
And since we are born as mortals as the sheep or the cow
We only can live in the here and the now.
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Friendship as you know can be a fickle thing
Though the praises of it many are known to sing
Where friendship once was bitterness sometimes grow
To that you may add tell us something we don't know
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You could be called a far worse thing than a grub
I've heard worse things called to others in the local pub
By men who had far too much alcohol to drink
Who uttered their jumbled words faster than they could think
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They remind me of naughty children in their immature way
In the Chambers of Parliament every day
They behave like rude schoolboys at each other they shout
The worth of our democratically elected parliamentarians one has to doubt
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Brown butterflies dancing in the sun and the breeze
On a January day close to thirty degrees
The brown grass looks lifeless and the countryside as dry as it has ever been
And only the trees and the bushes look green
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The praises of their God so many love to sing
But God 'twould seem to me is a symbolic thing
That the God fearing turn to for to cleanse them of sin
The people who dismiss the existence of any God within
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He is from the place of the silver back crow
And the hills where the gorse, heather and bracken grow
On land too rough and high for the plough around every stone
Near Rathmore in east Kerry by the Paps of Shrone.
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On the flagpost in your front garden flies your National flag
And of your patriotism you feel proud to brag
And nationalistic stickers adorning your car
Yet these things do not tell us of the person you are
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Why should I worry one small bit at my lack of renown
A former dunce of the school room in the boys school in Millstreet Town
On the hard old roads of life since then I've travelled up and down
For it's been many years ago since my hair was dark brown.
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Good memories of what was through life we retain
And the past we re-visit in our thoughts again
In Duhallow farmyards in the Fall of the year
The boo of the threshing machines I fancy I hear.
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