The Atlantic Way is the network of roads down the west coast of Ireland. Rowena and I were staying in Toberpatrick Cottage near Sligo, which is not far from the Atlantic Way. Each evening I was re-reading Yeats (who was buried in Sligo) and reflecting on his Ireland. This made me think that the tourists’ Atlantic Way may not be all there is to see. Yeats increasingly stamps his images on the poem as it progresses. Should you like to know, I’m not sure what, in the final line, we are retreating from. With thanks to Katherine Zesserson for letting us stay in her lovely cottage.

Far out in the Atlantic,
A force spins and weaves from mists and fog
A cloth that is spread across your grey streets,
Your gardens, and neighbours’ cars.
Embroidered on it, the face of Maeve
‘One who intoxicates’, the warrior queen
Who was buried upright on Knocknarea the better to face
Forever with fury her enemies from hungry Donegal.
Alongside Maeve, see the corvid Morrigan.
She takes the napes of enemies’ necks –
Their tender goldfinch beauty –
In her crow-like beak.
She smashes skulls
And breaks backs and vertebrae
To gorge on their rich marrow;
Collagen for her cheeks and lips.
Their stories are not fiddle-de-dee Irish tales
Making straplines for tourist brochures.

This is an Atlantic way
Far from the Hymers and caravans,
The convenience stores
Selling soda bread
And medicated lamb feed
Wagging tails to market.
Here, love hides her face amid a crowd of stars
And lonely Leda conceives a cataclysm.

Knowing this Atlantic way,
Call up Yeats from his Sligo cemetery.
Ask him only for the cloths of heaven
And take his tattered textiles –
His texts and stiles,
His myths and truths –
And lay them beneath our feet
To soften our way
With scattered remnants, mapping our retreat.