Let there be light. I walked up Barrack St. on a rainy morning to the Market Square. Then downhill by shopfronts and a drapery hall to the river I have named for you. I lifted a cotton tree from my schoolbag, brushed its old roots, and put it into a hole. Let there be a red-bricked post office to tell the time, and a red-bricked nuthouse where the mad may play. Let there be education. I passed through the classrooms of "The Slaughterhouse," where Tommy Brick and Chick Welsh ruled, to know my sums, and to learn my words. Scrape your head on the pebbledashed wall. "Kick the ball. Kick the ball." I swung at the ballgame I invented, while birds of the air sang on the wires. Dubs on Hill 16. Let me be home. Fresh herrings sold in boxes in the Square. Window and street lights all turned on. I will be a sailor. I will go away, but not till after tea. Reprinted with permission from The Tamed Goose Copyright © 1990 by Eamonn Wall The Hale Press

IMMIGRANTS by EAMONN WALL

Family pictures crowd our walls, we are haunted by the girls we didn't kiss, by the jobs made for us we didn't get. Lonelier than the parents we left behind, the dull life of the old country would be fast enough. Our national colours are the flags which aren't flown on Labour Day. At night we go home to break our bread. Our doors are bolted to America. Our dreams fastened to no promised land. Reprinted with permission from Dyckman-200th Street Copyright © 1994 by Eamonn Wall Salmon Publishing