A Stranger's Face Poem by Francis Duggan

In my first home-place Claraghatlea in Millstreet in Duhallow from here far away
To many there i would be a stranger today
I left there almost twenty seven years ago
And time since then it has become my foe
Only in fancy i see old Clara again
And hear the chaffinch singing in the wind and the rain
When the cool winds of April in Duhallow blow
In the countryside where Finnow to the Blackwater flow
And only the memories in me do live on
Of what in reality is in the forever gone
The boy of the fifties showing his years in gray
But the now is all that does matter as some like to say
And today in Claraghatlea in my first home-place
To many there mine would be a stranger's face.