HOMEBOY Taken from his mother at birth and reared in the County Home, left with strangers on a farm at fourteen, there was no time for education. A life of slavery lay before him, working for abusive farming men and women. He grew old in his youth, suffering backache from hard work and wettings as he laboured at every job he was given. Sleeping in lofts, cattle gave heat to his tired body night after night. The farmers he had slaved for know nothing of his whereabouts. In his sixties, on a week's holiday paid for by the St. Vincent De Paul, he enjoys the company of women, and is overcome when given a present of a book, or a woman asks for his address. Never before getting as much as a Christmas card, this old man seems cared for, happy in Knock. -- Mary Guckian, "Perfume of the Soil," Swan Press/1999