It Is All I Can Be Poem by Francis Duggan

I was fitter and healthier and livelier on my feet
Twenty six years ago when i lived in Millstreet
In twenty six years many a night and a day
And time rusts steel and iron as the wise one did say

In south west Victoria life for me goes on
And the past just a memory of the forever gone
We can only live in the now and the future ahead
And eventually i will be one of the dead

Perhaps the old retired horse in the paddock does not know he will die
Yet he is no less of a mortal than i
Than to the creatures we eat we may feel superior in every way
But for us like them there is a last night and day

Perhaps it is his way of proclaiming territory
The magpie who sings on the sunlit gum tree
And though my wonder of her ways only seems to grow
So little of Nature i can claim to know

In the countryside in view of Clara my life's journey began
And there from a boy i grew into a man
And though the wanderlust has made a migrant of me
A Claraghatlea fellow is all i can be.