Passion of Ireland

In Eavan Bogland's "Fond Memory," a young Irish boy writes of his experience of going to school in England and his longing to be back in Ireland. His words are passionate, as he says "I stood there trying not to weep at the cigarette smoke from between his fingers." Crying and weeping occur twice in the poem, and he also mentions pain and an "upward-straining song." Essentially the poem is about how much the boy misses Ireland, when he says, "I thought this is my country, was, will be again, t his upward-straining song made to be our safe inventory of pain. And I was wrong." 

 To me, California is kind of like my own country, because the US is so big that the states do differ a lot from each other. Sometimes I feel like crying just like the boy does, because where we come from really does in a way shape us. I do miss California, and sometimes I do feel alienated when I am away from it, just like the boy does when all the students cry over the death of the King and he feels no remorse. I dont know if his passion is strictly because he is from Ireland, or if he writes of simply what we consider "home" in general.