Francis Duggan Poems

It was to be the Priest's lay day in town
He locked himself into his room thought of leaving had got him down
Then knelt and said a prayer for the people he grew to love
He beseeched god to watch o'er them from his kingdom up above.
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One can say that the price he has paid
For every mistake he has made
For driving with a suspended licence he spent six months in jail
And his life so far a sorry tale.
...

Near Kabul a poor man is grieving for his three young children and his wife
He doesn't seem to have a future and nothing to live for in life
A stray bomb demolished his old home and killed his entire family
He's just one more unfortunate victim of man's callous inhumanity.
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Though she is only forty four she looks much older
And gray through her shoulder length hair of brown
But twenty years ago she looked a beauty
One of the finest in Dubbo her Hometown.
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Born in Doire he lived in Cork and Millstreet
The fame of Edward Walsh known far and wide
His poems still read beyond the shores of Ireland
Beyond the borders of his countryside.
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The talk is of a federal election
Though it bothers me none who will be empowered
We hear a lot of empty noises from Kim Beazley
And we know about the worth of Johnny Howard.
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The fields by the Blackwater I see them every day
And I hear the bullfinch piping on hedgerow far away
And cows are out to pasture and orange billed blackbird sing
And swallow from far Country has returned with the Spring.
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I fancy I can hear the sufferers moaning
The starving woman and the dying man
The malnourished children with the hunger blown pot bellies
My heart bleeds for the people of Sudan.
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Until mid April on higher parts of Mushera
Scattered here and there lingering patches of snow
And though songbirds in the high woods are singing
The mountain winds are chilly when they blow.
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In Claraghatlea she raised her family
She had lived there for half a century
And in Claraghatlea her life came to an end
And you could not wish for a better friend.
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