A Picture of Heaven

[Jimmy O'Connell]

A Picture of Heaven
Upstairs on a double decker as we
were going to school, he pulled out
from his battered school bag a magazine,
“Here’s a photograph of heaven,” he said.

It was of golden brick and stone, blue skies
without clouds and trees, and a lake beside it;
many steps led up to many levels where
birds flew round what seemed a square house on top.

“That’s where God lives,” he said. We
huddled and oohed, and I tried to count
all the people who managed to get in, and wondered
would my grandparents (who were real old)

get in, and would there be enough room
for them, and by the time I got there
the whole place might not be big enough...
“That’s not heaven,” a boy from Sixth Class

sneered, “That’s a ziggurat in Babylon.”
I was so disappointed. Where was Babylon?
And what was a ziggurat? At least this
heaven seemed real - as real anyway as

a Dublin city double decker
letting us off at Eden Quay.