I Have Not Been Back Poem by Francis Duggan

I have not been back to old Ireland for years
But for it i have shed my last nostalgic tears
And no tears left for Clara that ever looks down
On the evergreen countryside by Millstreet Town

Some three decades of years far south of Hibernia's shore
And in distance far from the high fields of Claramore
And far from Claraghatlea where i was born and grew into a man
I realize that i well may live out my life span

In the flat countryside where the rushes in clusters do grow
No tears for Duhallow where the Blackwater flow
And though on my flights of fancy familiar places and faces i see
I only have the memories of the what used to be.

Perhaps i will never again see the old Paps of Shrone
or Caherbarnagh or Gortavehy in it's face of stone
And my friends of the past i may not now recognize
Absence and time can make people strangers i have come to realize

Some of the children of the nineteen fifties in eternal rest lay
And the living are aging and showing their years in wrinkles and gray
clearly too i have known a far better day
And the clock on my life keeps on ticking away.