Australian Grave

Australian Grave of blighted hopes
Where deception begets despair
Now I hate your shams and your hollow smiles
And the grins that your people wear


And I want to go back to gods own land
where a smile doesn’t mean a frown
And to where kindness guides
the axe of man in that North of Ireland town


I’ve wondered far, ‘neath the blazing sky
And I have felt the lonely hush
That broods like a thing of eternal doom
Over sun scared waiths of  brush


And I’ve made my bed, ‘neath the ghostly gums
Where the shades of night come down
And I sigh for the breeze that’s blowing there
On my North of Ireland town


I have humped my swag ‘neath the burning scrub
And I’ve padded the hoof out back
with stinted stomach and blistered feet
I stumbled along the track


I’ve shorn sheep in the sweltering shed
‘till the days of the last cut out
And I’ve spent my coin in the wayside pub
With the duffers who sponged about


But lord when the last lone bob had gone
And the tracks spread bare and brown
How I longed for the nooks and streets
Of that North of Ireland town

Out here the girls are laughless
And there old before there time
Like witches they are twenty
In this god forsaken clime




They’re as withered as the gum tree
They’re haggard seared and brown
Unlike the sparkling maidens
In my north of Ireland town


It ‘minds me of my Cookstown lass
I can vision her beauty now
Her hair like the glint of the rippling corns
That waved on her marble brow


No haughty queen on her bronished throne
Wearing gem encrusted crown
Could match the grace of my loy hill maid
In my North of Ireland Town


We used to walk on a summers eve
Along the the road towards Moneymore
And we’d whisper hopes of days to come
With our joys of gift in store


But I never thought that fate would turn
And cast on me her frown
And take me for my colleen dass
In that North of Ireland town


Oh God my father please take me away
from this land of sun and sin
Where instead of a smile on my neighbours face
I see a deceitful grin


And take me back to my own dear land
Among the fields to settle down
And live out the span of my broken life
In this north of Ireland town